Jim Hamm has discovered an app for the Kindle called "Send to Kindle" for Mac. He suggests it may be helpful. Read more here.
Google Drive vs. The Rest of Them
"With interest in the Cloud increasing with more competing services, this article may interest our members," remarks David Passell. "I don't see any mention of Apple's service (iCloud??? don't even remember what it's called). We use Dropbox." The article compares Google Drive, SkyDrive, DropBox, Box, and SugarSync.
Free Up Storage Space on iOS Device
Six tips on how to free up storage space on your iPad, iPhone, iPod are described at this site, sent to us by Jim Hamm. He includes this suggestion, "Another tip is to frequently close open apps, as they all consume memory as they run in the background. If, say, your iPad seems slower, I bet that available memory is about gone and this slows down the iPad. Many of us -- me included -- often forget to close apps after we open them, on an iPad or iPhone.
"Double tap the Home Button to view all the running apps along the bottom of the screen. Yes, they're all running and consuming memory. Close them and your device should run quicker."
iPad, iPhone Questions
Jim Hamm walks us through some questions for AT&T customers: "If you're an AT&T customer, suddenly in the new iPad a 4G icon appears, as it did in the iPhone 4 upgrade to the iPhone 4S. Are you really getting 4G performance? What is 4G anyway? Do you even care?
"Well, note that no matter what the icon shows, if you're really getting 4G your rate plan will be different. Ah, yes. AT&T likes to do a bit of a fast-foot-shuffle in marketing their so-called 4G service. The following article gives a good explanation of what's going on. If interested, read on. If something like this bores you to tears, tap the delete button and move on...(grin)"....Jim
Travel the World from Your Desktop
Struggling photographer or an expert? Either one, you'll enjoy these gorgeous 3-D aerial panoramic views. Thanks to Jim Hamm we can click to see amazing sights from AirPano, a group of photographers who have 90 famous places in the world linked to their site. Some views are available in iPhone and iPad formats; you can also choose high resolution or low resolution.
Electronic Pen Coming Soon
David Passell sends this link to a description of an electronic pen that replaces much more expensive interactive white boards, an "interesting idea for presentations." The BBC site says Penveu will soon be tried out in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Cost? $499, but read what all it can do!
Considering iPhone and IPad Speeds
Jim Hamm reports: "I'm quite pleased with the speed of 3G on my iPhone. Zee and I just tried an experiment with our iPads. She has the new iPad with 4G here in Scottsdale. I've got the iPad 2 with 3 G. We entered websites in Safari and clicked send at the same time. Couldn't tell the difference. As the article explains only in certain conditions will one appreciate 4G speeds. For everyday surfing the net and emails, 4G probably won't make an appreciable difference."
Why Macs Are Subject to Malware Attacks
"Now here's an interesting theory about why Macs are increasingly subject to malware attacks: because anti-virus programs for the Windows platform are getting better and better. Huh? Read on. Low market share for OS X was, I feel, certainly a factor, in the past, for few malware attacks. Why waste a bunch of hacking effort on small potatoes? But it's interesting to read this guy's theory on another reason." Thanks to Jim Hamm for sending along this info.
Back Up iOS to iCloud & iTunes Simultaneously
"Here's a backup tip that appears, at first read-through (to me, anyway), a bit confusing," begins Jim Hamm. He explains, "Upon further cogitation, I think what it's saying is, when you're backing an iOS device (iPhone, iPad, etc.) up to the Cloud, to do a backup to iTunes as well. This requires an extra 'click', but once the data is in iTunes as well as iCloud, the data will also be backed up into Time Machine (from iTunes) the next time you run Time Machine. Pretty neat idea, and I haven't been doing this when backing up to the Cloud -- but I will now."
Touch Gestures for Mac OS X
"Here's a summary of touch gestures for your Mac. I've noticed that touch gestures don't seem to work in Mail," comments Jim Hamm.
Who Should Set the Price?
"In case you didn't see it, here is a good article debating both sides of the question: 'who should set prices on books -- the publishers or retailers'?" Jim Hamm sends this article from MacWorld. He says, "Although there's arguments to be made for both sides, I'm for retailers setting the price they want to charge. To paraphrase a point in the article, do you want, say, a chicken producer in Iowa setting the price of what you pay to buy a chicken in a local Safeway store?" Following the article find 33+ comments so far this morning. What's yours?
Yes, You CAN Find It
Mac makes it easy for you to find what you’ve written and saved. Of course, it does take a little effort on your part. So you wrote about your dog, but you gave the piece a cute little title. Now, where is it? You could try Command + the space bar which opens the Spotlight at the upper right side of the menu bar. With a few key words typed in you might get some clues as where to look. You can click on an entry there and it will open, or hold the cursor there and it will identify where it is filed.
Better yet. Give yourself an assignment. Go to that list of stories or articles or poems you’ve written. Click to open one of them and see what key words would help you find it next time. Then close the piece, click on just the title in the list of documents. Do Command + i and it opens the Spotlight Comments box with the info of Kind, Size, Where, Created, Modified, Open with, Preview and Sharing & Permissions. Put in some key words in that Comments box. Close and smile; you’ve just made your life easier with Mac. Next time one of those key words might help Spotlight find your document.
You already know you can find things by date when you click View to make it sort by date. If you just wrote this piece last week or last month perhaps you can find it by date. When you have Finder open on the screen you can do Search For and choose Today, Yesterday, Past Week.
Finding That Comma!
Something sent to me for posting on the newsblog had some commas misplaced outside, instead of inside the quotation mark. I needed to check the whole document while it was still on my mind.
In Pages, the writing program I use, I opened the document and did Command + F for Find. I put a comma in the blank by the word Find. One by one, as I went Next each comma in the writing came up highlighted. I could see the ones which were properly placed, and several that needed fixing. How easy is that! Find not only finds words that you want to locate, but can help you use your punctuation correctly. Sometimes in a font the exclamation mark looks too close, so I find each of them, highlight one of them at a time and change it to italic!
Finding Help For Your Grammar
Need some help with punctuation or grammar? Here are several websites, quick and easy to read. Info from Purdue University, examples, etc. Examples from Stage Door, short and to the point. Lots of links, samples, specific info from the University of Northern Iowa.
Finding Info on the Internet
What a relief. We no longer have to correctly type in http:// and the correct and complete URL of some site. Key words can help Google or Yahoo, whoever, come up quickly with a list of suggested sites. One of them on the first page is probably the one you want!
Finding Yourself on the Internet
Yes, the search engines know where to find you. Take a look. I’ve used Google as the example, but try also other search engines listed & described here.
Where do you live? Google Maps can show you. Enter your address. Click on the Yellow Man and drag towards the marker Google has placed. Neighborhood streets that have been filmed by the Google camera vehicle are shown now in blue. Up comes street view. Don’t like what they show? You can contact them about your concerns. What does your old house in Phoenix look like now? Are they keeping the yard looking nice?
If you enter your name in the Google search box and place quotation marks around it you can find websites that mention you by name, or other people with YOUR name. Interesting to see how many of “you” there are in the US.
You can also put your name down under Google Images and see what comes up! In my example, up came book covers and people’s photos from websites that have quoted a poem or writing of mine.
Been mentioned on the Daily Courier lately? Look under Find It for classifications such as Archive, Photo Gallery, Sports, etc. If you want to submit a great photo this is where to go.
Finding What Apple Is Doing
Keep up with the latest on Discussions and Widgets. Anyone download the “Boredom Button”? The Apple Store has items and prices, but also links to education, business, international stores, government and military, special deals, and click to talk to an Apple Specialist.
Selling e-Books
Recent news about Apple caught Jim Hamm's attention. He passes on what he's found out, "Here is an interesting article about the recent lawsuit against Apple and five major book publishers by the Department of Justice. I guess I'm against the idea of publishers forcing retailers to sell an e-book at a certain price. A retailer should be able to set their own price — that's the way competitive capitalism is supposed to work. However, according to this article, Amazon, at one point, sold new e-books below their cost, effectively slowly killing the real book industry. Is this good or bad? Why would Amazon want to do this, anyway — maybe to sell more Kindles, do you suppose?
"Three publishers have already settled the lawsuit, but Apple and two publishers haven't settled yet. It will be interesting to see what ultimately happens with Apple in this lawsuit."
Curious? Another Way to Check
Curious if your Mac got infected? Jim Hamm writes, "Here is an article by MacWorld describing another very easy method of checking to see whether your Mac has been infected by the Flashback Trojan. Odds are good that you haven't been infected, but I tried, out of curiosity, the small app in the second link below. It worked quickly and showed that my Mac wasn't infected."
Java in Lion: You Might Need Help
In a recent post regarding the Flashback virus, John Carter reported that he had a problem with Java. This “bug” appeared only after a recent update to Java. He brings us up-to-date here:
"There is a workaround for the problem with Java in Lion. (The problem is that in the Terminal the command ‘java -version’ returns an error message: unable to locate java runtime to invoke) The workaround is accomplished by adding the system environment variable JAVA_HOME to the login environment in the file /etc/bashrc.
"The variable should be set to '/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Home'
"There is no easy way to instruct the non-technical person on how to add a line of code to a system file. Anyone having a problem with Java should contact John Carter and he will install the workaround free." Go to the PMUG site > About Us and scroll down to Contact Us and click on Webmaster.
John closes with this, "The JAVA_HOME variable should not have to be added, so there is still some kind of Java problem that needs to be researched."
Now, John Carter to the rescue! Here's the very latest help: "Regarding why Java fails on the iMac Lion that I have, I just discovered this fix:
Remove this file: /Users/[logname]
The next time you execute ‘java -version’ in Terminal, you get:
java version "1.6.0_31"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_31-b04-414-11M3626)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 20.6-b01-414, mixed mode)
"This is confirmed by: osdir.com/ml/java-dev/2010-10/msg00974.html by Mike Swingler, Java Engineering, Apple Inc."
Any other questions? If so, email John. And remember, he's speaking this Saturday for PMUG. See you there?
Google & Safari Settings for Cookies
Jim Hamm keeps a lookout for useful information. "Here is an article by John Gruber, of the Daring Fireball blog, discussing the use of cookies from websites you visit. It's a little confusing to follow, but apparently Google decided to circumvent settings in Safari and permit ALL websites from placing cookies in your browser, even if you explicitly set Safari NOT to permit this.
"A 'John Battelle,' whom I've not heard of, wrote an article sort of defending Google in doing this. Gruber disagrees with both Google and Battelle on this issue (as I do, too), and the article lists some of Battele's comments followed Gruber's response."
Jim explains, "If you're not familiar with Gruber's blog, Daring Fireball, I have a lot of respect for his opinions and comments, on this and other topics.
"Google wrote code to specifically circumvent Safari's settings, and apparently no longer does this egregious action. Google certainly has been helpful in searching for stuff on the net, but I don't appreciate sneaky actions like this on their part."
iPhone Tips
A handy list of 35 tips for the iPhone user is here. And Jim Hamm adds this, "Here's a tip on another method of activating the camera on an iPhone: double-tap the home button. On the lower right is an icon for the camera. Put your finger on it and slide it up to open the camera."
More on Flashback
"The Flashback virus is real," emphasizes John Carter. He elaborates on the issue, "There is a Java update available from Apple to fix the problem.
"As a result of doing the latest Java update from Apple, I no longer have Java working on my iMac.
However, the update works on the Mac Mini and the MacBook Air.
" I discovered this on my iMac by invoking the following command in Terminal: java
"The result was: Unable to locate a Java Runtime to invoke
"I went online and discovered that many people complained of the same thing. It seems that installing the older version of Java fixes the problem, but then you leave yourself open to the Flashback virus."
John continues, "I attempted to install the older version from a download from Apple, but the package detected the newer version and would not install. I guess you can only install the older version from the installation DVD.
"At this point, since I am not doing any Java development I am not overly concerned about this 'bug' and I haven’t seen any problems with websites I’ve visited. Google Chrome has its own Java built into the browser and is the preferred browser now for surfing the web because it is immune to the Flashback virus.
"Within the next week, Apple should be doing something about the problem caused by the update and put out a new update."
An iPad Experience: From Frown to Smile!
"Last week I had the misfortune to drop my beloved iPad and crack the screen." exclaimed Mary Ann Clark. She explained, "I took it to our local Apple repair shop but they don't handle iPad repairs. The kind gentleman did give me information about a service that could repair it for $189.00. Before sending it off I checked Google and discovered that even though the screen isn't covered under the warranty, sometimes an Apple store will do a courtesy replacement. It seemed like a trip to the valley was in order."
She described what happened next. "I made an appointment at one of the Phoenix-area stores and drove down the next morning. They weren't able to do a free swap (that program ended when the new iPad was announced) but they 'repaired' my iPad by giving me a new one for $199. (Because this was a repair rather than a purchase there was no sales tax. Yea!) And I walked out with my new iPad the same day.
"I also discovered that Apple now offers AppleCare Plus for the iPad that includes damage from accidents like mine, spilling liquids on it and the like. With this new AppleCare, my repair would only have been $45. This wasn't available when I first got my iPad but the new one is now covered!"
And her conclusion, "Not a bad experience, all considered."
Member For Sale Items
Have you noticed that the PMUG website has a category under Benefits, "Member For Sale Items"? Martyn "Bhupesh" Arnold is one of our newer members, and he has some older Macs for sale that he's collected over the years. He wrote, "I make my living around Macs. I’ve been a technology and productivity consultant and trainer for 25+ years, focused mostly on businesses. I’ve been a Apple/Mac guy since 1982. I also do some programming." Here's his link to the site with photos of his refurbished Apple computers.