Reviewing iBooks 2

        Jim Hamm has more to say about this review of iBooks2.  "With the interactive features in iBooks 2, this will put a world of hurt on traditional textbooks. Here you are reading a textbook in iBooks 2 and there's audio and video available, places to take notes, a dictionary, et al. Since the iBooks upgrade is new, there's been bugs reported, so I won't upgrade for some time, if ever. I'm not much on reading textbooks anymore." And, predictably, Jim closes with a grin.

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iBook Author Controversy

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        Apple is getting some bad publicity over the iBook Author program.  Jim Hamm sends this article from Ed Bott of ZDNet, who details some questionable conditions and calls it "greedy and evil license agreement."  Jim comments, "I usually support Apple in its closed-loop system, but not this time. I think authors will just bypass this program. If I'm missing something in this scenario, let me know if you would."  Stay tuned for more on this hot topic.
        This just in from Allen Laudenslager, "What I've read is that Apple is giving away the software to create iBooks BUT if you use it for commercial purposes (i.e. write a book and the sell copies) you have to pay Apple. If you give away the book then you don't have to pay.  Not a bad marketing tool when their goal is cheaper and better textbooks written by the teachers themselves."
        Entering into the discussion now is John Carter.  Here's his view.  "The new app called iBooks Author is available FREE in the App Store.
        "If Apple wants a piece of the pie for books created and published with this app regardless of where the book is published, I think that’s a good tradeoff for providing such a fabulous app.
        "Apple is making available thousands of free educational material through iTunes U. Most of that material is provided solely by the creator without any regard to providing a consistent experience to readers regardless of the source or topic, and most of it is entirely video in nature.
        "The whole purpose of iBooks Author is allow educators to create interactive textbooks intended to be viewed on an iPad, although it can be used to create an iBook for any purpose for any audience. This is a new educational outreach for Apple. In order to sustain this effort, funding must come from somewhere. If Apple were to depend on corporate, public, or private contributions in order to allow the creator to publish outside the Apple domain without some kind of remuneration then they would also have to make sure that iBooks Author would work on any platform. Keeping it in-house is a way to ensure that conformance with Apple standards are maintained so that the quality and experience that comes out of the iBook is consistent.
        John closes with this observation, "A consistent user experience of all apps across all Apple products is almost a trademark of Apple."

Happy New Year

        The Board at PMUG want to wish all of you a Happy and Prosperous New Year.  With the new year comes our membership renewal.  We hope your experience with PMUG has been enjoyable and informative this past year.  We strive to make the meetings interesting and bring useful information to our members.
        Our secretary Bobbie Pastor reminds us that annual membership is still $20 for a single or a family membership.  Go to the PMUG website and click on Join Now for an application or see Bobbie at the PMUG meeting to join. (Thanks to Bobbie for the lovely photo.)

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Clean Your Mac

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        Ward Stanke shares this info about a FREE disk cleaning app.  The press release claims, "CleanGenius Pro is an award-winning and all-in-one Mac solution for Mac OS X 10.6 or later, featuring the options to fast scan and clean up Mac junk files, completely uninstall unwanted applications, show disk space available, warn when the disk space is running low, and eject mounted drives with a brand-new look, positioning itself as a must-have utility to speed up your Mac."
        The Free version is available on Mac App Store here; the Pro version is free here.  Both are available for only a limited time.  A Mac consultant,  Ilene Hoffman includes a link to her blog. 

Photographers' Tips

        Want to see what Gimp can do?  John Carter sends this info:  "Here’s an image that has been slightly modified by GIMP - the corners of the image have been rounded and a drop shadow added. Click on the image to highlight it to see the original full size.

"Gimp makes it dead simple to round the corners of an image. To do this, choose Filters > Décor > Rounded Corners. A dialog will open. Select the Edge Radius, which is the amount of curve, and if desired, click to add a Drop Shadow and then set the Shadow Offset and Blur Radius. You can select to work on a copy of the image (rather than the original), and select whether or not to add some background behind the curved corners – the current background color is used for this. Click OK to round the corners of the image.
        "When it comes down to it, only ONE step was required to achieve the above results.  Now compare that with the similar task in Photoshop here.   For additional Gimp tips, look here.

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Take Control of iTunes 10

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        Take control:  those two little words grab your attention?  John Carter helps us out, "The 173-page Take Control of iTunes 10: The FAQ, Second Edition is bursting with answers to all your iTunes questions, and it has a special new chapter devoted to explaining iTunes in the Cloud features, including iTunes Match. The author, Kirk McElhearn is a Senior Contributor to Macworld, where he writes frequently for the Playlist column. It normally costs $15, but is only $10.50 for MUG members using this link:   http://tid.bl.it/itunes-faq-mug-discount
        "Kirk helps you appreciate and understand the process of adding media to iTunes, tagging it, adding album artwork, and organizing it into playlists. By following his setup advice, along with the many other tips in the book, you can enjoy your music, movies, audiobooks, ebooks, and more without hassles when it's time to find a particular item or when you want to do something special like sync a subset of music to your iPod, create a party playlist, identify music you haven't heard in a while, or listen to the chapters in an audiobook in order.
        Take Control of iTunes 10: The FAQ includes a pair of coupons. You can save $5 on Equinux's SongGenie tool for automatically filling in missing album artwork, fixing incorrect song titles, adding lyrics, and identifying unknown songs. And you can save $3 on Rogue Amoeba's Airfoil software for playing audio wirelessly to any source."
        John closes for now with this, "PS: Don't miss the just-released Macworld iPhone 4S Superguide, a 268-page ebook that provides setup advice; details on most of Apple's apps; insider suggestions for working more efficiently; ways to work with music, photos, and video; a thorough troubleshooting chapter; and recommendations for cases, headphones, speakers, and more. It's also 30% off via: http://tid.bl.it/iphone-4s-superguide-mug-discount

New Library Restrictions

        There are new Prescott Library restrictions, John Carter informs us:  "If you haven’t been to the Prescott Library this week, here is information I’m sure you’ll want to know about when taking your laptop there.
        "As of 1/8/12, the restrictions for accessing the Internet at the library have been increased. This was instituted when the library switched over to using the more robust and secure city servers.
        "You can no longer access the Internet with email applications like Thunderbird, Mail, Outlook, Evolution, etc. You are allowed to access your webmail using an Internet browser.
        "In addition, access to the Internet with VPN is not allowed, as are other protocols of similar ilk.
        "Skype access is allowed (but as yet unconfirmed). And if you know how, you can use SSH to remotely log in to your home computer which then would give you unlimited access to the Internet.
        "The explanation given for not allowing email applications to access the Internet has something to do with IMAP’s and VPN’s vulnerabilities, in that the servers can be attacked via those protocols."

5 Reasons to Choose iPhone Over Android

        Here with some cheery news, John Carter forwards this article by Tim Brooks.  The article states, "If you’re considering buying your first smartphone, you’ve got a fairly big decision to make. As well as choosing a carrier, plan and minimum contract period you then have to trawl through the barrage of handsets until you find something you like.
        "Most buyers will probably end up choosing between the Android operating system and an iPhone running iOS. So how do you know which is right for you? In this editorial I’ll put the iPhone argument forward and explain why I think Apple’s plan is better than Google’s."

Google Going All In

        This caught John Carter's eye.  He notifies us, "Albert writes in his Continuations blog:  Last July I had predicted that Google would go all in by bundling Google+ aggressively with search and that is exactly what was just announced yesterday with Search, plus Your World. The 'plus Your World' part right now refers 'your world on Google' as only Google+ profiles, posts and shared images are included and not content from Twitter, Facebook or others. John Batelle’s capture this well in his aptly titled 'Search, Plus Your World, As It’s Our World.'"