AAUG Reviews

by Ronald Schoedel, AAUG Member

Have you ever been surfing the web, following link to link, and come upon a really useful site you didn’t even know about? Have you later tried to locate the site, to no avail? Perhaps the site was no longer in your history and Google was no luck at all. Maybe you were even trying to track it down weeks later. Browseback, from Smile On My Mac software, holds the answer for you.

Browseback is an application that store exact replicas of the pages you visit and arranges them in a graphical manner to allow you to easily find the site you were looking for. Maybe you don’t remember the name of the site or even much of the text, or maybe it was an image site, so searching for words would be fruitless. Enter Browseback’s graphical interface, which lays out rows of stacked images, sort of as if you were spreading out a pile of papers to search for one. This allows you to quickly see the layout of the page, and by hovering over it with your cursor, you will get information on the page’s location, when you visited it, and even which browser you used. (Browseback indexes pages visited with all the major Mac web browsers.) Clicking on the page brings up a full size preview, and allows you to visit the page again, print the stored copy, save it as a PDF, or email it…all from within Browseback. (more…)

by Tim Thomas, AAUG Member

Want to use iChat AV or another application that needs video input, but your older Mac doesn’t have a built-in iSight? You still have options. Add an external video camera. There’s the beautiful Apple iSight, at $259. Ouch. Then there’s the slightly-less-beautiful-but-still-very-cute Ecamm iMage USB webcam, at $59.95. Now you’re talking my language.

The iMage USB webcam (pronounce it: image) is a plug-and-play camera that connects to a USB 2.0 port on any Mac with a 600MHz or higher G3, G4, G5, or Intel processor running OS X 10.4.3 or higher. Oh, and it works with Windows XP and Vista too, if you care about such things.

The iMage has a 1/7-inch color CCD sensor, a little smaller than the 1/4-inch sensor in the iSight, and serves up 15 frames-per-second uncompressed video at 640X480, also only half the fastest frame rate of the iSight. And unlike the iSight, the iMage has no microphone. You’ll need to supply your own sound input, USB preferred.

But the iMage is smaller than the iSight by a bunch and can be positioned pretty much any where you want; on top of your display, under it, or wherever. Also, unlike the built-in iSight, you can point the iMage at something besides your face. That’s hard to do with a built-in camera. The iMage has an anti-skid magnetic pad on the bottom of its tiny foot, as well as screw holes for wall mounting, and even a threaded tripod mount hole. Nice touch. I’ll be using that.

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by Gary Miller, AAUG Member

My wife decided that she wanted to show many photos of Amaryllis flowers to prospective buyers. She had used small images in an email, but that didn’t always work, and I wondered if my iLife’s iWeb would do the trick. So i launched it for the first time, and started playing with it. Apple furnishes a very small tutorial, and a help file, but no here’s how we get started, and examples that are off the beaten track which seems to where I get with my Mac.

Enter the Take Control Books iWeb edition for iLife ‘06 by Steven Sande. The first thing you notice about this downloadable book of 120 pages is that it is straight to the point, no mumbling words, no wandering in sentences. It’s clearly written, and invites you to try another way of setting up your simple website.

So i began in earnest, and the book quickly guided me through the basics, and beyond. The front page of the book is the table of contents, and it’s well organized into easy to find topics that I used often. Since it’s on your computer, you just click on a topic, or sub topic, and it takes you there pronto. I liked that. It followed the various features of the application well, and gave more in-depth guidance too. Most welcome! I found my site much fun to create, here’s the link in case you want to see what i created: http://web.mac.com/garyinalaska

What i liked next to learn was how to create a shopping cart, or a way to sell merchandise from your site, the book gave many ways and examples to do, great! (more…)

by Gary Miller, AAUG Member

When I bought my new Canon 30D camera, i knew there would be much to learn in my first SLR digital, but I was ready, having used a few point and shoot digitals. But the problem was the guide one receives from Canon is weak, written by someone in Japan with poor English understanding. So I was yearning for a book that teach me how to use my camera, and improve my camera shooting skills; this book does both excellently.

The author, Charlotte Lowrie is a freelance editorial and stock photographer, and award winning writer, so it makes it easier for the reader to understand what she is attempting to convey to me, be it it in camera speak, or simple English, she does both well.

Another issue I have with many photography books, is lack of color images, and illustrations, so I know and can see what the author is driving at, again Charlotte is excellent. I sometimes felt as though she was next to me tutoring, as a sure footed teacher.

If you’re like me, i learn by trying a concept or new shooting style out ,and this book invites trial and error, so we can get better with our new camera. She has great explanation shots of lens and what they produce. The camera, known as a proconsumer level, has much to it , and since the book starts with set up, then exposure control, composition, lighting and moves on. A chapter on Light, and another on goes on, a chapter on black and white photography or business photography. She moves onto using RAW and how that is advantageous for editing, and ways to make it work for you.

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by Randy Brandon, AAUG Member

Being a fairly heavy computer user, I keep finding myself at my computer more, and more hours every week. And when you spend as much time at your keyboard as I do, you start to notice little things that annoy you. Normally these things are software related problems, but not always.
But I really take notice when the hardware presents some problems that I think I could either fix, or at least modify to make them work better.

And so it was a while back, that I noticed that while I actually liked my existing keyboard, I hated how totally dark, and hard to read that it was. I do the lions share of my digital work at night, and I actually prefer to have most of the ambient room light off, so that it does not bleed over onto my monitor, and skew the delicate color balance that I work with.

Now my existing keyboard was the standard Apple black keyboard that shipped with my G4, and it has served me very well. But hey, it’s black, and all but disappears in a darkened room.

So, even though Apple has illuminated keyboards built in to some of their laptops, they have thus far failed to built a standard sized illuminated keyboard for their standard desktop computers.

And so the search began to see if anyone actually made stand alone illuminated keyboards.

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by Jane Thomas, AAUG Member

The Body Glove notebook sleeve is made of neoprene, designed to protect your notebook, keeping it safe inside your briefcase, backpack, or however you carry it around. When I went to the Body Glove International website, I found that my notebook sleeve was made by the same company that developed the first practical wetsuit, also out of neoprene. Cool.

When on their website, I also noticed that Body Glove has lots of different products. At the top of the list are wetsuits. But they also have clothing, swimsuits, snorkeling gear, personal floatation devices, and more. Among the non-water-sports products is a line of “Technology Accessories,” which includes little wetsuits for your cell phone and ones for your laptop. Unfortunately, it looks like they just have a single item in the laptop wetsuits section, a notebook sleeve for 15-inch laptops. And it only comes in one color, black. The people wetsuits come in lots of colors and sizes. But not the laptop wetsuits. Depending on the demand, it might not be worth having too many color selections. But I bet some folks (like me) would like a choice of at least one more color, maybe red or blue or gray.

Sadly, my iBook is an exquisite miniature, a 12-inch. So the notebook sleeve is a bit on the large size. I think I’ll give it to my nephew who’s in college. His laptop is a 15-inch model. To try out the fit, I tried on a 15-inch laptop from work. The notebook sleeve had a nice secure fit, with a bit of room for a file or two in the inside pocket. As the tag says, it “fits like a glove.”

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by Carlene Brown, AAUG Member

RapidWeaver 3.5.1 is a website creation software. It is described as very easy to use, and I read reviews that indicated it only took one or two hours to have a website up and running. Enter into the picture a person, such as myself, who has never built a website and knows nothing about the basics of website creation and the story is a little different.

When you first open RapidWeaver you see a welcome screen that suggests you read through the included quick start guide. Which I did and was able to create a page but there was much more I needed to know. So, I finally went on-line to view the tutorials that are furnished, and I was able to advance further. However, it became very clear that I needed to know more if I was going to develop a website that was stylish and creative. Realmac Software furnishes an on-line User’s Guide that covers each area of the program in detail. They also have posted a Basic Website Creation Guide and a Beyond the Basics Guide. I haven’t progressed to the advanced guide but have found the others very useful in understanding what I am doing and how to accomplish the things I want to see on my pages.

RapidWeaver contains ten pre-made pages that you can use - blog pages, contact forms, photo albums, Quick Time, file sharing, styled text, etc. As you design each page RapidWeaver automatically creates the HTML code. You can view the HTML page but you can not edit it. You don’t have to know anything about HTML but I had taken an HTML on-line course a few years ago and find it helpful to understand the basics.

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by Jack A. Fiske, AAUG Member

The book, Take Control of Apple Mail in Tiger, is the coordination of both a reference and a ‘how-to’ book. It is one of a number of informative books showing focused and practical electronic technology, written by Joe Kissell. Several of those envelop computer usage with Interesting tips and activities.

Coming from a PC background, I have read other books explaining usage of several Microsoft programs, such as Word. Listed in reviewed book using pain, but not boring language, are explanations in usable language giving tips, gripes and notes, many in shaded, bordered boxes providing hints and solutions to problems to watch out for. Ways to modify and improve fonts and graphics on incoming mail is shown for better readability in saving communication as in address book etc. Tiger shows Modifications from previously used mail programs to deal with bugs. I find it very well organized using buttons, graphs and photo presentations to search for desired information. Helpful hints are found in shaded boxes giving facilitation on most pages. Many help points, both in handling previous recipients and cleaning up their list. Numerous pitfalls are noted to avoid.

A quantity of some twenty pages is given to aid in composing and sending messages. Perhaps seldom addressed, how to set up and utilize parental control methods is spoken to. These include both permission and alarm. High-quality graphs are shown to illustrate. Some humor is used to give a less encyclopedic appearance to suggestions.

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by Zach Manzella, AAUG Member

QuickBooks 2007 is excellent financial software for the small business. For $170.00 this software can save you its price many times over in time-savings and organization. QuickBooks 2007 comes with a CD for installation and an instruction booklet. Although the five inch by seven inch instruction booklet is less than one hundred pages, it contains easy-to-use instructions on installing QuickBooks and Setting Up Your Business. The other areas of the booklet that do not have enough information can be supplemented by going to a online community and asking for input or the online QuickBooks KnowledgeBase or printing information contained in the CD on certain topics. QuickBooks is a popular program, and therefore many small business people you meet will have stories or advise to share about QuickBooks.

Installation of QuickBooks 2007 was uncomplicated and very fast. The user is allowed fifteen uses during which the user must register the product. The software does a great job of leading you through the installation and to the beginning of setting up your company.

At the beginning of the company setup QuickBooks provides the user with a New Company Setup Assistant to walk the user through the five major areas of setting up the company: 1) General, 2) Income & Expenses, 3) Income Details, 4) Opening Balances, 5) Documents. The New Company Setup Assistant allows the user to go back to previous page or area to review or change information. The Setup is easy to navigate and comfortable for those of us who will remember something they need to add to the page seven screens before. (more…)

by Jane Thomas, AAUG Member

I’m Christmas shopping again, this time for my 11-year old niece Zoey. She’ll get Zoo Tycoon 2 from Aunt Jane. And I bet she loves it! She loves animals, so this program will give her the chance to have her very own virtual zoo. Right now she has four cats, a bunch of fish, a neighbor’s dog every now and then, and a little sister. With Zoo Tycoon 2, she’ll have a whole menagerie! My guess is the large cats exhibit will be created first.

Zoo Tycoon 2 is a simulation game that lets you build and operate your very own zoos. I wasn’t familiar with the original Zoo Tycoon program, but it sounds like version 2 is chockfull of improvements. One key improvement from version 1 is the enhanced 3D graphics. Can’t imagine the zoos without it.

You can choose from any of three modes: You can be the zookeeper, a guest, or a photographer.

The instructions and guidance in the Zoo Tycoon 2 Journal (user guide) are really helpful and gave me lots of ideas of other ways to play and other facets of the zoo to pay attention to. Between the Journal and the tutorial demonstration, you can get a very good rundown on the various game panels and the choices you have. I wish the text in the Journal were a bit larger. The text is in a comfortable, handwritten-like font, which looks nice, but is a bit too small and light for me to comfortably read. (more…)