AAUG Reviews

by Gary Miller, AAUG Member

When Mrs Claus brought me an iPhone, it was like the Holy Grail had come into my life…. But like all things in this era, even ones that cost $400, no instructions are included, so I went looking for a book to quicken my learning curve. Andy Ihnatko’s iPhone Fully Loaded was suggested to me, and I thought it would be a good move.

Andy is a comedian masquerading as a tech writer. He’s written The Mac OS X Tiger Book, writes a column for the newspaper Chicago Sun-Times, and can be heard on numerous podcasts, radio shows, etc, according to his bio on his website/blog: http://ihnatko.com/ entitled: Andy Ihnatko’s Celestial Waste of Bandwidth.

What I thought I was getting in this book, more basics, or how to enhance my iPhone usage, but what I got was half comedy ( not that funny to me and probably added 50% extra pages ), and basics of iTunes, how to rip a cd, watching tv on an iPod, and a few 3rd party app’s I hadn’t heard of. But not being a naysayer, I read further in the 23 chapters divided into 4 parts:

Basics of Content
The Real World
The Internet
The Office
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by Dave Enders, AAUG Member

When you first get your new iPhone, it looks so nice. My previous cell phone was a Palm Treo 650. I didn’t know about Invisible Shield at the time I had the Treo. I bought some screen protectors but when they were applied it made the screen very difficult to view. So I removed it from the Treo. After 18 months, my Treo looks like it is 10 years old. I didn’t want that to happen to my iPhone. Live and learn right ?

Shieldzone markets what they call invisible SHIELD for the entire iPod product. The invisble SHIELD is a military grade film that is scratch proof and guaranteed for life.

What is included with the product is the appropriate pieces of shield material, application solution and squeegee. What is nice is they have an installation video online so you can see a demonstration of how to apply the shields to your iPod. I found this beneficial because the instructions included with the product are fairly sparse, plus it is always better to see see it done the first time. The online video is for an iPod but it conveys the essential information to get the shield installed. (more…)

by Chris Tofteberg, AAUG Member

It can be frustrating for Mac users when it comes to programs for vendor-provided printers and scanners. They either don’t work or they’re just a skeleton of what they could be. It seems our Windows brethren are better taken care of than we are when it comes to printer and scanner utilities. In addition, Leopard has generated a few complaints from the Mac crowd, one of those complaints focused around scanner problems. I’m in that crowd, but I’m happy to say that VueScan not only fixed my Leopard-unfriendly scan program, it’s even better than the program that came with my scanner.

VueScan is a program that interfaces with your scanner (the VueScan website claims that 750 models are supported) to enable features to select, alter and save scanned items to your Mac. You use VueScan instead of the stock program that came with the scanner. That’s not to say you couldn’t use the stock software, but you won’t want to after using VueScan.

My interest in VueScan started with my upgrade to Mac OS 10.5, which bricked the scan feature on my HP PSC 2355 all-in-one. I downloaded and installed the VueScan program, (more…)

by Dave Enders, AAUG Member

I recently started uploading the reviews for AAUG. Our website uses WordPress to publish the sites content. I have to admit , I didn’t know a lot about blogging, WordPress or HTML when I started doing this two months ago. I managed to get my first few posts done although it took me a lot longer than I thought it should and I was frustrated at times with the formatting of the reviews. I wanted to learn more about WordPress. While browsing Amazon.com, I came across this book announced as a pre-release. I continued to post reviews while I awaited the release of the book that I hoped would translate the World of WordPress into something I could understand and become an effective user.

As I started to read the first few paragraphs of this book, I found myself saying, “… that’s how that is done ” , “… that’s what a slug is”. I was immediately impressed with this book. It is written in a clear , concise manner and flows nicely from chapter to chapter. The author references back to chapters if you choose to jump around reading the book. I quickly learned that there are three versions of WordPress (Hosted, Self Hosted and Multi-User). Why you would choose one over the others is very well documented. I liked that the pros/cons and costs associated with each version was presented. (more…)

by Chuck Maas, AAUG Member

In just a few short years digital imaging has largely eclipsed film as the method and medium for making photographs. The ease of capturing and sharing images via e-mail and on the web has a magnetic draw that’s hard to resist. However, digital image files require some means of transfer and storage, so computers have become an integral part of the picture-taking process.

For Mac users, Apple’s iPhoto program readily meets the needs of many of users providing a slick interface and capable (though basic) image adjustment and file management. But there are limits to its capability, and for those wishing more control, including the processing of RAW files to extract the highest possible image quality, a step up is required. In the past, that step was often a pretty big leap all the way to Adobe Photoshop, long recognized as the industry’s heavyweight standard for image editing programs. But Photoshop is expensive, has a very steep learning curve, and makes big demands on computer resources, preventing many from taking the plunge. Because of that Adobe saw the opportunity for an in-between product and brought us Photoshop Lightroom.

So what does Lightroom attempt to achieve? Here are Adobe’s words: “Adobe® Photoshop® Lightroom software is the professional photographer’s essential toolbox, providing one easy application for managing, adjusting, and presenting large volumes of digital photographs so you can spend less time in front of the computer and more time behind the lens.” In a nutshell, (more…)

by Leila Wise, AAUG Member

Going to sites you shouldn’t or that you don’t want others to know about? Worried about protecting your online privacy? If you want to surf and hide your IP address - and, hopefully, prevent web sites or hacker from seeing your identify, then this utility is for you.

WebGhost is a utility that allows users of Safari, OmniWeb, and Camino to surf anonymously, via an anonymous proxy. Firefox is not supported. WebGhost works - or at least the proxy’s IP address showed up when checking the IP address online. Users can choose to use WebGhost’s proxy for one year, then renew for an unspecified cost. WebGhost’s private proxy reportedly offers full anonymity and privacy protection. Access to the server is password-protected. It’s easy to use.

Or users can surf using free public proxies, although WebGhost says these are less secure than its proxy. WebGhost updates its list of public proxies each day and allows users to configure their security - from good to better to best. According to the user guide, “good” essentially means the proxy server makes it harder for the site you visit to obtain your IP address. “Better” security allows the site to see you’re using a proxy but prevents it from determining your IP. “Best” security neither sends your IP address nor identifies itself as a proxy. When I used the software, anywhere from 24 to 49 proxies were considered good and two to four were considered best.
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by Elaine Robinson, AAUG Member

Apple’s iTouch™ is a thing of beauty and I want to keep mine that way sans scratches and such. The Griffin elan Convertible Leather flip top case seemed to be the answer to keeping the iTouch its the original pristine condition.

It seems everything today comes encased in plastic and you need heavy duty scissors and sometimes bandaids in the end to finally get it open. Griffin packaging, although plastic, did not require any tools and opened quite easily. Once opened, the lovely smell of top-grain leather emerges. It was quite intuitive to slip the iTouch into the case. It fits perfectly and exposes the entire screen and Home button. The top is open for the on/off button and the bottom affords full accessibility for your earpods and the USB cable connection. The stylishly embossed flip cover is sturdy and magnetized at the bottom to keep the cover closed. Also in the box was a static peel screen protector and a soft cleaning cloth.

The features include a soft microfiber lining to prevent scratching, a removable two-way clip for belt, bag, pocket or briefcase. The flip cover can be removed and reversed for horizontal viewing and serves as a built-in stand. The static peel screen protector is great to keep scratches from your iTouch screen. The screen protector is sandwiched between two plastic sheets with attached labels 1 and 2. (more…)

by Richard Geiger, AAUG Member

Stuffit Deluxe 12.01 is the most recent release of the compression utility by Smith Micro (Formally Allume Systems). Smith Micro has versions of Stuffit for Windows and Linux in addition to the Mac OS platform. The features that are new to Stuffit 12.01 is a new technology to compress 24-Bit Images, JPEG files, MP3 files, Apple iWorks documents, PDF, and Office 2007 documents. The feature that made me interested in reviewing Stuffit was the ability to compress JPEG files. The developer claims you can reduce your files size by 30 percent using Stuffit. In addition, Stuffit can compress MP3 files by 10 to 15 percent. I tested the program using Mac OS 10.4 (Tiger). If you are running Mac OS 10.5 (Leopard) I would check with Smith Micro to confirm the software is compatible.

If you are running Norton AntiVirus you need to update from 12 to 12.01 right away according to Mac Fix It website because of a conflict with Stuffit. If you have stuffit 12.0 you need to uninstall the old version and install the new version. You will then have to reenter your name and serial number to activate the program.

One of the main features I was interested was the compression of JPEGs. I tested some small and large JPEGs. (more…)

by Diane Petersen, AAUG Member

I hear it over and over from die hard Mac users. I’m almost embarrassed to admit it my self. “Why would you ever want to run Windows on your Mac? Are you crazy?” Knowledge is power, people! It pays to be “multilingual” in the computing world. Whether it is to experiment and learn from an academic viewpoint, or to run that one piece of “niche” software you just HAVE to use, virtualization is your way to have your Mac and eat it too. Well, maybe not literally, although Apples are quite tasty.
We have many options at our disposal. And I have used some of those. There was a PowerPC option that…well, it worked, sort of. Now that we have an Intel platform on the newest models a myriad of solutions are available. The one I am focusing on is Parallels by SWSoft. It has been a front runner and previously our only true virtualization solution.

I had been a steadfast user of “another solution” until I had the opportunity to review this product. I take this from the standpoint of a brand new Windows user. Imagine a pure and simple Mac, without Windows to complicate things…yet. But my MacBook Pro is tough, so tough I heard it can run Vista faster than any other laptop on the market (see for details.) The install of the Parallels software was seamless (once I completely eliminated all traces of a prior installation.) I had a Windows XP license laying around unused, so I used that for my installation. Parallels users must calculate into the cost of running an alternate operating system the outlay for the operating system being installed (Windows Vista Home Basic, $150.99, amazon.com). Prior users of a PPC partition have the ability to import that image, but I simply used the disk to create a Windows XP install disk and effortlessly installed XP. (more…)

by Elaine Robinson, AAUG Member

The Apple™ earbuds that are included with all iPods etc. are great for sound but I find are too big for my ears and therefore uncomfortable and they tend to fall out.

The Griffin TuneBuds are packaged in a plastic box roughly the size used for a toothbrush. I always make note of the packaging in an effort to alert the manufacturers to becoming “greener”. I think that Griffin is trying to make the effort and as a consumer I appreciate that. In the box were the TuneBuds (red), and two sets of silicone TuneBud covers in a smaller and larger size for a custom ear fit. The medium ones on the TuneBuds seem most comfortable for me. The covers are washable and are TuneBuds to jack cord length is 46 inches and lightweight (0.4 ounces/12 grams). The cable is covered with a red silicone which I like. The TuneBuds also come in a variety of colors: blue, pink, silver, light blue, light green and red.

The sound is fantastic. I plugged them into my iTouch, played “Georgia On My Mind” by Ray Charles and closed my eyes. (more…)