Found: 

Did everyone else already know this?  Jim Hamm sends us this tip:  "Give this a try:  Shift+Opt+K.  Not a 'biggie' tip, admittedly, but kinda neat.  Be the first in your neighborhood to sport this logo."  And Jim signs off with his trademark (grin).   I tried this on about a dozen different fonts, and every single one comes up the same. How fun is that!

Understanding Computers Made Easier

If you want to understand more about how computers work you'll want to take a look at these links from John Carter.  He writes, "Albert Wenger has a blog called Continuations. Although Albert’s daytime job is working at a Venture Capital firm, he seems to be doing quite well at explaining how computers work in his Tech Tuesday column."Scroll down to "Computer’s Building Blocks" and to "Of Bits and Bytes." John closes with "Anyone new to computers will undoubtedly come away with a better understanding of the innards of a computer."

Beware! This is VERY techie!

How to Check Out eBooks at Library

Following is a brief article on checking ebooks from a library. Jim Hamm explains, "As the http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/10/hands-on-checking-out-library-books-with-kindle.ars article states, the process is a bit clunky, but it works and it's much easier than driving to the library twice — once to borrow and once to return a book. Over time, I feel certain, the process will improve and the selection of available ebooks will increase."

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Making the Transition from MobileMe to iCloud

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        Have you been reading about the transition to Lion, the move from MobileMe to iCloud and how to deal with some issues?  Ward Stanke sends this helpful info.
        "This article from Ars Technica talks specifically about the problems some users are having managing the transition from MobileMe to iCloud, specifically problems with multiple or shared AppleIDs.
        "This article from Apple User Group Resources includes a handy chart which shows the differences between MobileMe and iCloud and what is supported or not under each. It also show what alternate applications could be substituted for the old familiar ones which won't work under Lion (such as AppleWorks and Quicken). It also lists a number of helpful links to help walk you through some of the issues."

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Clearance Sale: Take a Look

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The alert eyes of Jim Hamm caught this special sale info.  Take a look, "The online Apple Store is having a clearance of the original iPad for three select WiFi and WiFi + 3G models, including the flagship 64GB WiFi + 3G iPad. Now available for up to $200-$230 less compared to their original list prices, these products come looking like new and with the same 1-year warranty that other Apple products receive. All refurbished iPad models also include a brand new battery and outershell. Supplies are time-limited, as indicated by the Special Limited Time Price designation. Availability is guaranteed upon receipt of full payment."   Check out this link.

iCloud Info

        Here is a series of helpful articles on iCloud from the "Basics4Mac" newsletter sent to us from Jim Hamm.  He says, "I've set up iCloud and one use of it I'm impressed with is how it syncs to all your devices. For example, a friend notified me of a new email address while I was reading on my iPad. I changed my contacts list on my iPad and made a mental note that I've got to change the new email address on my two Macs and iPhone. This is easy to forget to do—for me, anyway. When I opened contacts on my MacBook Air to do just that, voila, it had already been changed! For anyone subscribing to MobileMe (I don't), this will be old news. But for me, this syncing process is very helpful.
        "Unfortunately, iCloud will only sync certain things—not everything on your Mac. Thus, say, if you've only got one Mac and use Time Machine to backup, then iCloud is probably of limited use to you," Jim concludes.

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iCloud Backup

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        Jim Hamm sends this helpful advice:  "Following is a posting (not mine) from a forum I subscribe to on using iCloud for backup. This may be helpful in determining what—and how much—of something you do want to backup to iCloud. Every app you have installed is listed and how much storage is used for that app. Storage can be turned on/off for each app."
        "For those of you who will be installing iOS and using iCloud tomorrow -something it took me quite awhile to learn - if you have an app with a lot of content (iBooks for example) make sure you turn it OFF in iCloud backup (iCloud > Storage & Backup > Manage Storage > Backups / Devices / Selected Device >; Backup Options > iBooks/other App > Off). I sync a LOT of items to iBooks on both iPhone and iPad (1.9GB > 2.3GB) so I was filling up my 5GB of 'Free' space and was quite annoyed that backups were taking up space but once I realized what was taking up 4.2GB I turned iBooks off on both devices and my backups went down to 400MB & 500MB leaving me 4.1GB free for other storage."

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Possibly, an iPad Mini

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        "Sending this link from PadGadget, Jim Hamm asks, "Could this rumor be true? What do you think: a good move for Apple or not? Zee just received her new 'mini' Kindle, and is it ever small and light, but has the same screen size as a regular Kindle. It is a pleasure to hold and read books on it. It is unbelievably thin and light. She has 363 books stored on it! Digital downloads is a market that will grow, in my opinion, and I think it would be smart for Apple to participate more fully in it by offering a lower-cost iPad.
        "I'm relatively new to the digital download world, but I've taken a liking to it, and enjoy the ease of getting books from the library and reading them on my iPad. I just downloaded a new book from the library this morning, and didn't have to budge from my easy chair to search for and get the book. Nice. An iPad Mini with a lighter weight is an intriguing thought for me."

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Be Prepared!

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        Not just a Scout motto, but a good reminder to all of us, “Be Prepared.” Our main consideration today is be prepared by backing up what’s on your computer. Hopefully you’ve got an exterior drive that’s lit up, doing its job with Time Machine, as you’re writing on your computer. So what happens when the unexpected happens? What about an electric surge or malfunction of the transformer out there in the alley?
        Surge protector strips might help. How about an APC Back-UPS device? Or, better yet, a whole-house surge protector from APS?
        We experienced a problem just last week with the alley transformer. Four neighbors were also affected. Interesting what got fried and what didn’t. Good-bye to my dishwasher, microwave, fluorescent light in the laundry room, 3 radios, the doorbell, and a couple of surge protector strips. Thankfully, not hurt were the computers, printers, TV, and washer and dryer.
        SOS to some knowledgeable guys from PMUG. “Would an additional backup device that’s only plugged in once a day to use, then unplugged, be a good idea?” was my query.
        John Carter emailed, “For my iMac, I have a 500GB USB powered hard drive that is solely dedicated to being a fairly recent clone of my internal hard drive, and once I update the clone, it is put away in the closet. I only update it once every few months. I also have Time Machine backing up to a 1TB hard drive. If I should lose my internal drive — or the entire computer — I can boot up off the clone and restore from the Time Machine. I also have another 500GB USB powered hard drive that I back up my personal files to. This one gets updated fairly often and then is unplugged and put aside. Now, I have two machines, an iMac and a MacBook Pro, and they are pretty much a clone of each other. The MacBook Pro has its own Time Machine hard drive. So if one goes down, the other is brought up to date from the backup of the down machine and I’m no worse for wear. And since both machines have the same operating system and complete set of applications, I only need one bootable clone for both machines.
        "Industry standard backup methods is to have one set of full backups onsite and another duplicate set of backups offsite. The onsite backups are incremental every day and the offsite backups are full backups once a week. The weekly backups are rotated every four weeks so that only four devices are needed for the weekly backups. One device is used for the daily incremental backups. These daily backups are accumulated on that one device until the end of the week when it becomes the full weekly backup. A duplicate is made of it and sent offsite. Every fourth week one of the weekly backups comes back from offsite and becomes the next daily incremental backup device. Once a year, or as often as the company’s policy dictates, the backup devices are replaced with new ones.”
        John summarized, “You can never have too many backups. Choose what is critical to you and be very paranoid about it.”
        Jim Hamm wrote, “I recently purchased a small external drive from Amazon, a Buffalo Technology MiniStation Stealth 500 GB USB 2.0 portable external Hard Drive HD-PCT500U2/B (black). It is very small, quiet and only $50. I’m quite pleased with it and would buy another one.”
        David Passell went into detail, “I bought two My 500GB Passports about two (or three) weeks ago from Best Buy. One was specifically for Mac, the other for PC. I set up/partitioned my Passport for Mac as a clone for the Mac HD;  I purchased the fully featured SuperDuper. The internal Mac HD was 120GB and was getting limited in free space. I created a sandbox, in a much smaller partition, on the passport from which I always start. I also have some items I save on a partition that is just "passport.” It works very well. if I disconnect it (while the Mac is off), the Mac will restart from its internal HD. When starting/restarting, hold down the OPTion key and select the drive or sandbox to start from. The System Preferences startup disk does not work.
        "As for the PC Passport, I connected it to a Windows 7 Dell. it backed up the machine two ways. (1) I used the 'smart' software that came with the Passport and found it only backed up Data. I used the backup software that is part of Windows and it backed up (I think) the whole computer. I am really not very familiar with Windows and have difficulty telling where anything is, or what is running.
        "As for writing to the PC Passport if I plug it into the Mac: I obtained Mac Fuse and NFTS 3G. That combination of 'other' system preferences allows transparent writing to the disk. Before installing those, I could only read from an NFTS-formatted drive. Formatting a drive to NTFS is another matter. It appears more involved. Several forums simply say find somebody with a Windows machine.
        "I bought a Seagate Free Agent several weeks ago. It had a lot of movie promotional material on it; one movie I could watch free, and about 150GB of movies I would have to 'subscribe' to. It seemed clunky and I returned it.
        "I purchased a WD My Book 3TB drive hoping to replace the 500GB that I have been using since 2008 for Time Machine. It was PC formatted but I repartitioned it for Mac OS extended Journaled it to use for Time Machine and other things. It was totally unsuitable. It would not automatically mount on Mac turnon. I reformatted it (on a PC) to NTFS, restored the software that was on it, and returned it for credit."
        David’s recommendation: “As far as power surges are concerned, I strongly recommend putting a UPS (I've been using an APC for years) between your equipment and your power lines. I also installed a power surge protector right inside the main breaker box (keep one hand behind your back and wear rubber soled sneakers when you do this :).  I also have a UPS between the power line and my VCRs and DVD recorder. That way recordings and timer settings are seldom lost except for very extended outages.   
        Jim wrote again to emphasize, “The most important thing about backing up is to do it. Another aspect that's important—and which I just recently did—is to have a bootable backup clone. A couple of programs to do this, and which are mentioned often in blogs, are Super Duper and Carbon Copy Cloner.”
        Don got us started now, buying two APC Battery Backup units that each handle 6 outlets. But, that’s just the start, so the project continues . . .
        Review the basics: A 5 minute video about Time Machine http://www.cultofmac.com/82299/how-to-easily-back-up-your-mac-with-time-machine-video-how-to/
        A helpful article from Macworld on what and how to backup. http://www.macworld.com/article/156601/2011/01/what_how_backup.html
        So, what do you think, and how can YOU be prepared? Are you backing up? Are your backups secure?
        See you at Saturday's PMUG meeting!