WiFi Hotspots in Prescott

This list of WiFi hotspots in Prescott comes to us from David Passell.  Double click on the screen shot to enlarge it.
    Allen Laudenslager adds to this list Rooster's Cafe, across from Think4Ink on Montezuma.  He says, "Free WiFi, great coffee, good food and outdoor seating if you prefer.  Besides, all the people are just nice folks."

Setting Up a New Mac

        Setting up a new Mac for someone? Jim Hamm has found some good info:  "Here’s what David Allison did for his son’s new Mac before he went off to school. These tips could be useful for anyone setting up a new Mac. Of course, this is just David’s opinion on the apps he likes. You may have other favorites as well.
http://www.davidalison.com/2010/09/setting-up-new-mac-for-college-student.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+DavidAlisonsBlog+(David+Alison's+Blog)
or, Open in new window
or, Click Here
        Jim goes on to explain, "You’ll note I provided three links to the same website. The first one is too long, for my liking, so I normally shorten a long link using TinyUrl (http://tinyurl.com/). That’s the second URL above. But, I thought I’d try another method of shortening a long URL, just for the heck of it. You can do it right in Mail. Open up a new message. Then, copy the long URL address into the Clipboard. In Mail do a Cmd + K. Paste the long URL into the dialog box. Then click OK. The long URL will appear in the new message. Click after the first letter (h) in the URL and type something like "Click Here”. Then delete all other letters in the long URL, including the first “h”. You’ll then see the third short URL as shown above.
        "Yes, this is a bit of extra work, but it goes quickly once you do it a few times. And, it looks a bit fancy with that extra touch to make your email look nice. Admittedly, not a 'biggie.' but fun to do."

Free Phone Calls with Google

"Free!" This just in from our world-traveler, Jim Hamm.  "Here's an interesting article on a new feature Google is offering: free long distance phone calls in the U.S., and inexpensive phone calls overseas. I just tried it by calling, on my Mac, my two sisters in Ohio and it works great. The voice quality, both ways, was fine. All one needs is a Gmail account. When you're logged in to your account you'll see a new heading in the lower left corner called 'Call phone.' Click this and an on-screen keyboard pops up and you use the cursor to call a number. At this time it will show the call coming from a number in California, not your home phone number. Perhaps in the future Gmail may be able to show the call coming from your home phone number."

How Do You Use Your Mac?

Do you blog? Do research? Take iTunes classes? Write to family and friends? Write to be published? If you have experiences to share, questions to ask, or tips and tricks to pass along send it to Elaine at this PMUG newsblog. (If you do write you might enjoy the friendly group I teach: Writers’ Networking group of Prescott Valley, meeting the 4th Thursday of each month, upstairs in the community room of Stepping Stones, 3343 N. Windsong, PV.  More info?  775-2706)

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Photography and the iPad

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"Here’s a neat article in Digital Photography School that talks about using an iPad to improve your photography skills," John Carter informs us.  "I don’t have an iPad or an iPod Touch. I’m not sure if I’ll ever own an iPad, but I’m getting pretty darn close to dipping into my savings for a 4th Generation 32GB iPod Touch. My Classic 80GB iPod is proving too cumbersome to use."

Find a Bargain?

David Passell sends us this note tonight, "For anyone interested, I was at Prescott's Goodwill Store on Iron Springs Road today and saw a 400mb G3 iMAC for $29.95. It is sitting on a $14.95 computer desk. I looked it over and unfortunately did not have an airport card, or I would have bought it. They have a 14 day return period, so if it is bad you can return it. It is the same model machine as I have that runs Tiger. Not sure of its memory, HD, DVD. Good enough for E-mail and light web browsing."

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Increasing Your Speed

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        This morning's news headline, "Valley Chosen to Test Fast Wireless Network" was an attention-getter.  Check it out here.  Compare prices, services, etc. with a link to SpeedTest.  The numbers are interesting.  Anyone trying out Google Chrome to see if it's faster and better?  Slow is out, and fast is in.  Keep us posted.
        Now we hear from David Passell,  "The aritcle does not appear to apply for up here. However, Commspeed says they have ordered towers, etc. for WiMax (3 - 6 mbs.) No idea if they will charge more. For more details go to commspeed.net.
        "Cableone at present says that 10Mbps can be had for $53.00 a month, and that is not an 'introductory offer.'
        "Qwest is somewhat difficult to pin down (DSL) because of their weasel-worded advertisements. On closer inquiry I found that no matter what I could spend, I would be limited to around 1.5 Mbps because fiber optic service is not yet available where I live. They always like to present best case in the ads 'your results may differ.'
       " I installed Chrome, and I couldn't see any difference. I also found it so much different from the other three browsers I use (Firefox, Opera, and Safari (which also claims to be a much faster browser than the other two) that I didn't want to mess with another learning curve. Perhaps that speed advantage would only show up if my ISP were in the higher Mb range. Commspeed wireless currently pokes along at around 1 - 1.5Mbps. I principally use Opera or Firefox because of their multi-line bookmark and tab lines.
        David's conclusion, "I personally wish that the concept of 'information belongs to the people' would be applied in this country as it is in Finland. There the government has the concept that every citizen has a right to high speed internet access, and is taking the steps to make it so. That is something like the former communications philosophy 'the airwaves belong to the people' where anyone could listen to a broadcast. We didn't have active but unseen agencies (and the government) trying to manipulate systems so everyone would have to pay somebody something for the 'privilege' of receiving content; and no fair skipping commercials:(."

Fixing Those Forwards

        Do you get email forwards with a long stripe down the left side?  Do you send on those forwards looking like that?   John Carter can help you fix the forwards.  Here's his advice:
        "This is just a portion of email netiquette concerning forwarding email. The following tip works for Mac Mail.
        "When you forward email, the outgoing mail will have a vertical line on the left margin. Like this:

It's okay to have a vertical line if you intend to let the reader know you didn't create that text (you're quoting the other person). In that case, you should precede that text with a note identifying the originator or just to add a personal note of your own so the reader gets a clear impression you are alive and that the email isn't just automated.
        "If you want to get rid of the vertical line, do the following:
1. Highlight all the text with the vertical line on the left margin.
2. Press Cmd ] (hold down the Command key and tap the right square bracket). This forces a shift to the right of all the highlighted text.
3. Now press Cmd [ (Command and left square bracket) twice. The first time you do it makes the vertical line disappear. The second time forces a shift to the left of all the highlighted text goes back to the left margin.
        "If you have multiple vertical lines in the margin, you have to press Cmd [ for each vertical line.
        "Now, if you want a vertical line in the margin, highlight the text and press Cmd ' (Command and single-quote). This is also known as quoting the text.
        "If you just want to indent something, highlight the text and press Cmd ].
        "When you forward a forwarded email, you're adding one to the number of vertical lines already in the message, and it starts to get ugly to read. In that case, you would be doing the reader a favor by eliminating all the vertical lines before sending it off."
        John's closing admonition:  "For a full course on email netiquette, Google 'email netiquette.'"

Listen, Watch, Learn -- for FREE

        "Why attend OLLI classes when you can just use iTunes to listen to lectures by Nobel Prize laureates?" is Art Gorski's pronouncement.
         Today's (August 24) news article from Cupertino announces, " In just over three years, iTunes® U downloads have topped 300 million and it has become one of the world’s most popular online educational catalogs. Over 800 universities throughout the world have active iTunes U sites, and nearly half of these institutions distribute their content publicly on the iTunes Store®. New content has just been added from universities in China, Hong Kong, Japan, Mexico and Singapore, and iTunes users now have access to over 350,000 audio and video files from educational institutions around the globe."
        Read more here, and note that it is FREE download of iTunes 9 for Mac + PC.  You can even access iTunes U on your iPhone or iPod Touch.

Useful and Free

        Yes, De Former Prez Allen Laudenslager knows PMUG members well.  If it's useful and it's free we'll take a look and probably try it.  He notifies us, "I just found this on Mac360 and thought I'd pass it on.
        "TexFinderX digs through multiple files in a folder to find the text you want, shows you what it looks like, and gives you the option of replacing it with something else. Most of us have used the find and replace options in MS Word or Apple Pages, but that limits the changes to one document at a time.  Check out this free Mac app that will allow you to replace text in more than one document in a folder with a single find and replace command.  Here's where to get TexFinderX."

Going Places with Mac

        After reading the latest emails from Zee and Jim Hamm we wish we were going places with them! Oh, well. The next best thing is to peek over their shoulders, thanks to Mac.
        Jim started by writing, “On August 24 my wife, Zee, and I will fly to Paris, France to start a month-long river cruise. We will be accompanied by two other couples, all travel friends for many years. We will be going with a tour group: Grand Circle Travel. We've traveled with GCT previously and enjoy the way they host and organize trips, and they own the two cruise ships we'll be on. We cruise from Normandy on the north coast to Paris, spend a few days, then get on a smaller river ship and cruise to Nice on the southern coast. There are 140 passengers on the first ship and only 45 on the second ship. The rivers are smaller in the southern part of France so we have to be on a smaller ship. All meals are included, and there is wine for lunch and dinner. The three rivers we'll be on are the Rhone, the Seine and the Saone.”
        Never heard of that last river? Type it in the search box in Google and up comes 6 images for viewing. Oh, there it is.
        Jim continues, ““I'm trying this TravelBlog for the first time. In theory, I'll type comments about our trip as we cruise along. When we get to a village I'll try to find internet access in an internet cafe and publish my blog to this site. An email will be sent to you alerting you that I've published another blog. If you want to read it then click this link; http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/SlimJim/ . You can bookmark this link for future access. My nick-name for the blog is SlimJim. After this trip, with all that French cooking and fine wine, I'll probably have to change my nick-name to FatJim...(grin)…”
        But, Jim, are you taking Mac? How does a person travel with Mac?
        Jim informs us, “If it's an international trip, we insure that we have a good, protective case to put our Macs or iPad in. I also take along a small backpack so I can easily carry my MacBook Air to an internet cafe if wifi isn't available in the hotel. Wifi isn't available on small river ships, so when we depart to tour a local village I take my MBA along in the backpack.  On our iPhones, we turn off all cellular roaming and location services so we don't incur horrendous charges from AT&T. We check for and install any current updates that might be available just prior to departing.
        “We make sure we have the proper electrical adaptor so we can plug our chargers into an electric outlet. We don't need a voltage regulator internationally because Apple products all take either 120V or 240V. This is nice because regulators are heavy.
        “On domestic trips, we carry along two wifi directional antennas that receive and boost wifi signals. Often in motels and RV parks the wifi signal is weak to begin with. We use the Wi-Fire antenna from hField Technologies: http://www.hfield.com/the-wi-fire/platform-compatibility/mac/ . We have found the use of the Wi-Fire helps significantly.
        “Last, don't forget to take along the charger(s)  and an extension cord. We usually leave the Mouse behind on international trips. Just something else to carry and mess with. That's about it. Bon Voyage.…” Jim
                            Let’s look at a few more helpful sites:
        Check out the travel company Jim and Zee like: Grand Circle Travel. http://www.gct.com/ The site lists trips, regions, ways to save, traveler discussions. Let’s see what seasoned travelers can suggest here:
        “How to Travel Light”: Wonder what we can learn? One writer announces she packs half of her wardrobe with clothes with a small stain or isn’t so up-to-date. After she wears that article she discards it. By the end of the trip she has room for the treasures she has bought! Another buys garments from 2nd hand shops and throws them away as she goes.
                              Well, what else can we discover?
        Avoid a large phone bill when traveling. http://travel.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/travel/01prac.html Get the right phone, Check data roaming plans, consider SIM cards, Look at the VoIP Option, don’t forget the old-fashioned calling card. (Anyone try this?)
        Next, I did a Google search and read a Macworld article.
http://www.macworld.com/article/45771/2005/07/augustmobilemac.html Then I noticed the date was 2005. I forgot to specify time range under More, so sites listed would be within the past year.
        Is that all? Oh, no. There’s a lot to read, and learn, and do! When you plan your next trip maybe your friends at PMUG would be interested in it. How did you use Mac to make it a successful trip? Anything you’d do differently? Jot down your info and send it to us.
        (This was my handout at the August 21 PMUG meeting.)