Info Manager

Info Manager for October 13, 2003

[*]   Judge rules in favor of Lexmark cartridge return program

[*]   What's New in Panther?

[*]   Motorola to spin off chip division

[*]   A Vital Resource

[*]   Age of Mythology released

[*]   Vote for Dilbert's Annual Weasel Award

[*]   Napster is back... but not iPod

[*]   Sculley says Apple should have gone to Intel

[*]   iTunes for Windows

[*]   HP to out source Laser Jet work?

[*]   Napster launches on October 29th

[*]   Stop paying for millions of tunes

[*]   Record Sound from any source

[*]   Shift-Key Beats CD Copy Protection?

[*]   Pop Goes the Cell Phone

[*]   Spammers and Hackers: double menace

[*]   AOL once again proves it is the spammers friend.

[*]   Stupid Mac Boo-boos

[*]   Register for the User Group University

[*]   Quotes: Goodwin; Hale; Carnegie; Wells; Einstein

 

Judge rules in favor of Lexmark cartridge return program

Computer World is reporting that Lexmark has won a legal battle that gives them the right to sell their laser cartridges for less to customers who agree to recycle the cartridges back to them and accept recycled cartridges from them. This means that competitive cartridges will be placed at a disadvantage. Full story at:computerworld.com

What's New in Panther?

• Click a file or folder, then use the new Action Menu to get info, duplicate, copy, open, print, or perform other operations.
• If you get lots of email on the same topic--the Tafel proposal, for example--Mail now organizes all of your related mail into a single group, or "thread," making it easier to figure out who said what and when.
• Keep contacts on Microsoft Exchange servers? In Panther, you'll be able to synchronize them with your Address Book contacts.
• Archive easily. Panther lets you compress and expand files right in the Finder.
• If you read PDF files, you're really going to like the new version of Preview that ships with Panther. It not only renders PDF content three times faster than PDF readers for Windows, but it also builds instant indexes to search criteria in any PDF.
• FileVault keeps all the files in your home directory safe and sound by encrypting them with the 128-bit key Advanced Encryption Standard adopted by the U.S. government.
• Faxing is now as easy as printing. Panther lets you send and receive faxes without any additional software or hardware.
• Font Book makes it incredibly easy to install, preview, activate, and deactivate fonts.
• Designers delight: In Panther, a simple double click lets you convert any PostScript document into a PDF.
• Use UNIX? In Panther you can open X11 applications simply by double-clicking them.
• For an extra measure of security, Panther offers a "secure erase" option to ensure that files you put in the Trash are completely removed and cannot be recovered.
• Search fast. Lightning fast. Panther begins searching as soon as you begin typing your search criteria.
• Mail now supports drag-and-drop addressing, leverages the S/MIME security standard for encrypted email, and uses the IMAP protocol to make it easier to set up Microsoft Exchange email accounts.
• Panther supports Microsoft Active Directory authentication.

What else is new in Mac OS X Panther?

Motorola to spin off chip division

Motorola Inc. has decided to spin off its semiconductor arm and turn it into a separate publicly traded company. This is because Motorola intents to increase its focus on communications and integrated electronic systems. This will make company's Semiconductor Products Sector an independent semiconductor company and will allow them to concentrate on what they know. It is too early to see how this might effect the Mac market however. But the stock market did like the news. Full story at:rcrnews.com

A Vital Resource

I got this information from the Social Security Administration. They mention that there are times in your life when you need certain documents. Like a birth certificate, a marriage or death certificate and perhaps a divorce decree. Do you know where to get those documents? Now there is a web site that is dedicated to the purpose of ordering these documents. Check it out at:socialsecurity.gov

Age of Mythology released

MacGamer.com is running a story about the release of Age of Mythology by MacSoft. It will start shipping on November 5th. Should be an immediate hit on the Mac. Of course, it follows the pattern of Age of Empires and thus will be immediately familiar to a great many gamers. The big difference in this one is you have gods fighting each other. (Greek, Roman and Norse.) See the full story at:MacGamer.com

Vote for Dilbert's Annual Weasel Award

Adam Scott has done it again. While it is unquestionably a self promotion idea for Scott, you actually do get to influence the outcome. So go and vote for your favorite weasel

Napster is back... but not iPod

With its relaunch on Thursday, Napster, the most notorious name in music downloads, will collide with the hottest music player on the market, the iPod. That's because music downloaded from Napster will not be playable on Apple's insanely popular iPod. The newly legal Napster service and the iPod use incompatible file formats. However if you want unlimited downloads for a single, monthly subscription, there IS a way to get those tunes on to your Pod... We'll tell'ya how; stay tuned. Napster is back... but iPod not!

Sculley says Apple should have gone to Intel

John Sculley, in an interview for Forbes said that Apple underestimated Intel's ability to adapt to RISC architecture and thus limited their future by picking the PowerPC chip. Read the full article at: Forbes.com

iTunes for Windows

As I was finishing up this column on the 10th, I came across an article at News.com that said Apple would launch iTunes for Windows on October 16th. If so, that is great news, as so many other music stores have taken the "newness" off the iTunes store. Hopefully Apple will sell 10 Million songs to Windows users by the end of November. (And sell lots of iPods to them as well.) Full story at:Full story at: News.com

HP to out source Laser Jet work?

According to an article in the Enquirer web site, HP is going to contract someone else to do the development work on their laser printers. The ROM work to be done in India. Sounds like HP is doing anything to cut costs. But it is hard to believe someone else can do a better job of creating printers.Full story at: The Inquirer

Napster launches on October 29th

World's Largest Digital Music Collection, 99-cent Downloads -- they've begun beta testing and will be available to all music fans in the United States on October 29th. The new service will offer 99-cent downloads to anyone with a PC and the largest digital music library in the world with over 500,000 songs. Napster 2.0 will also feature a series of innovative partnerships that empower consumers to move their favorite music from the PC to digital audio devices, into the living room and their cars. Music fans who pre-register will get five free downloads when the service launches atNapster

Stop paying for millions of tunes

RadioLover is the internet radio recorder for you -- record your favourite internet radio streams as separate songs. listen to your favourite radio shows on your ipod. * Record Internet radio streams as individual MP3 songs, * Record multiple radio streams at the same time, * Split and organise recordings by song, time, or size... it's deleriously wonderful, It actually records for any given period of time, and then saves the individual tunes to a folder. I don't know how they do it, but they do. You'll need lots of hard drive space. Once recording is over, you simply return and throw away what you don't want. You can even record favorite talk shows, news stories and even commercials -- if you're into that. You'll also need a very fast connection; DSL or Cable will do fine -- and RadioLover

Record Sound from any source

We told you about this before, and you should grab it before it becomes a commercial product... WireTap 1.0.0 is free, and it allows you to record any audio playing on your Mac, saving it to a file for later listening or processing. This allows you to record news from Internet radio stations such as the BBC News, sound snippets from your favorite DVD movie, record the audio from a game, or even iChatAV conversations. You'll be able to record those Napster tunes right into your iTunes and/or iPod. Simply click the record button, and any audio playing through your Mac will be recorded to disk, regardless of the source, so RealPlayer, iTunes, DVD Player, Windows Media Player, etc. are all supported. Hook your old turn table up and convert all that vinyl to MP3! Who would bring you such a phat deal like this?
Click here to download, or get more info at Ambrosia.

Shift-Key Beats CD Copy Protection?

Katie Dean at Wired News reports on the recent news story of a Princeton University student who found a way to beat music CD copy protection. John "Alex" Halderman discovered that by simply pressing the Shift key when loading a copy-protected music CD into a computer's hard drive, he could disable SunnComm Technologies' MediaMax CD-3 software, which is supposed to prevent CDs from being ripped. He published his finding on his website, plummeting SunnComm's stock. The company then threatened to sue the student, charging him with violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, or DMCA. Katie Dean's article , or the original story at Wired.

Pop Goes the Cell Phone

Thursday, Nokia pointed the finger at counterfeit batteries after another of its phones exploded and burned its user. This is the third such case in two months, including one incident which left a 15-year-old boy with leg burnsAnother Wired story.

Spammers and Hackers: double menace

Steve Linford, leader of the Spamhaus Project, which maintains a blacklist of known junk e-mail operations has blamed the development of new, high-tech stealth cloaking for spammers on recent alliances between spammers and computer crackers. In a Wired news story he comments:
      "Hackers used to detest spammers, but now that spamming has become such a big business, it's suddenly cool to be a spammer."
      He cites junk e-mail businesses now attract laid off or fired engineers who really know what they're doing with networking and DNS. Linford is convinced that the Fizzer mass-mailing Internet worm was the work of a virus writer affiliated with a spam operation, and that the first variant of the recent Sobig computer worm was designed to turn compromised PCs into spam proxy servers. Of course InfoManager already told you that earlier in the year. Read the story at:Read the story at: Wired.com

AOL once again proves it is the spammers friend.

According to the CBS Morning Watch newsletter, America Online is preparing to deliver 30-second television-style ads to its instant-messenger users.
      The have eight advertisers signed up to participate in a 2 month study starting in November. During this pilot, the ads will be limited to 2 a day. I think we should boycott any company that participates. I didn't find the full story on CBS Morning Watch on its web site, but it may be posted later. You can search there at: Marketwatch.com

Stupid Mac Boo-boos

From Fred Showker:

What happens when you assume something's going to work the way it's supposed to? And you don't read the book?
      Last week my Digital Graphics class was poised to turn in their digital files for grading. One of my favorite things about teaching this course at James Madison University is I never have to grade "papers" in the old fashioned sense. This year it would be doubly nice with our new lab of 20 flat-panel iMacs with CD-RW drives. They can simply turn in their work to the master iMac (mine) and then burn their work to a CD-RW disc. I would burn them all to mine, then return to my office for grading.
      New Murphy's Law: When you assume the CD-RW drive in your iMac will burn multiple sessions from the Finder, you destroy 20 CD-RW discs.
      After discovering all the students burned a single file to their discs, I figured it was time to pick up an OSX book and figure out what we did wrong. The only problem is, after several hours of digging and digging, the top ten OSX books indicated we had done the right thing! Then according to the "Using Mac OS X Special Edition" book I discover the finder does not burn multiple session CD-RW discs as multiple session. It renders them as single session, locked discs after the first burn.
      Since no other software was available on those iMacs for burning CDs, I went hunting -- here's what I found:
Disc Burner 1.0
This program lets you create and share your music, video, photos and data on CD and DVD. You can protect your valuable data on CDs or share it with Windows PC users. It also supports burning in the background. Freeware - www.centromedia.com
CD Session Burner 2.0
Apple's built in disk burner program burns the whole disk even if you only need to back up a few MBs. This will let you burn multiple smaller volumes to the CD until all the space is used up. Shareware $17.00 Expires after 25 sessions cdsessionburnosx.sit
FireStarter FX
This Beta for Mac OS X 10.2 is a pure Cocoa, Mac OS X only, burning application, easily backing-up CDs that Apple's Disc-Copy and Roxio Toast cannot copy -- as well as cue/bin disk-images from the PC world. Best of all, it brings overburning to Mac OS X, including Multi-session burning. Direct download: FireStarter_FX-1.0b5b.dmg
If you've got other solutions, please contact me!

Register for the User Group University

The next UGU will be held on January 5, 2004 in San Francisco the day before the Macworld Conference & Expo opens. If you have never been, then you should go. Past speakers have included the Woz, Guy Kawazaki, David Pogue and Shawn King. There is a discount available for campus group leaders. Pre-registration is $39.95 per person (Early Bird; after November 21 the price is $54.95). There may be some seats available on a first come first serve basis at the hotel, but no guarantees so register early at the Acteva registration page. Pre-registration ends on December 29, 2003 at 7 AM PST.
      There is probably as much if not more learning going on between sessions in general discussions with other MUG leaders. You will also get first hand contact with a number of vendors.So register soon at Acteva.com

Quotes: Goodwin; Hale; Carnegie; Wells; Einstein

"The impossible is often the untried."
      - Jim Goodwin

"I am only one. But still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. And because I cannot do everything, I will not refuse to do the something that I can do."
      - Edward E Hale

"As I grow older, I pay less attention to what People say, I just watch what they Do."
      - Andrew Carnegie

"I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can't stop eating peanuts."
      - Orson Welles

"I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world."
      - Albert Einstein

We'd love to hear your quotes!

 
      pau

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Also see: MUG NEWS bursts from the AACUG Mac User Guide (MUG)

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The InfoManager invites user groups to use his column in full or in pieces in their newsletter. Or add a link to their web site. He would appreciate word that you are doing so however and if you can, please send a pdf version of the newsletter for his perusal. Or provide him with a link. The address is InfoManager@user-groups.net. You can also use that address for feed back.

The Info Manager is a veteran of the UGN (AOL User Groups Forum) and User Group Network. He's been a supporter and volunteer on many, many UGNet and User Group Academy projects. As a long time user group member, he's served as volunteer from Honolulu to Boston and many points in between. Currently working with the Apple Corp of Dallas, the Dallas Mac Pack, Cowtown MUG of Ft. Worth and TUMS (the Tulsa Users of Macintosh Society) doing newsletter articles and the monthly CD-ROM Update. Post a lead Info Manager should follow up on.

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