Info Manager for September 23, 2002

[*]  Faster Classic;   [*]  The smiley :-) Turns 20!;   [*]  Stonger wireless signal;   [*]  Photos in e-mail;   [*]  Wireless networking;   [*]  Napster to become an "adult" site?;   [*]  .Mac at 100,000;   [*]  Cutting spam;   [*]  Newton web server?;   [*]  Chinese Mac User Group;   [*]  The "Newseum";   [*]  General Magic to cease operations;   [*]  Shattering the Five Percent Myth;   [*]  Real Estate Question;   [*]  PBS showcases Ulysses S. Grant via QuickTime;   [*]  UG Tip;   [*]  This Week's Quotes
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Faster Classic

A member of the InfiniteLoop mailing list made this suggestion: (says it really speeded up the Classic environment)
HOW TO REINSTALL CLASSIC/OS 9 AFTER CLEAN INSTALL OF JAGUAR
Follow these steps; you will need a Mac OS 9.1 CD to complete them.
1. Reboot off a 9.1/9.21 CD.
2. If you will be installing Classic onto a different partition than OSX, skip to step 5.
3. Open the folder "System:Library:CoreServices".
4. Drag the suitcase "System" from the CoreServices folder onto the desktop.
5. Run the Mac OS 9 installer normally.
6. If you skipped steps 3 and 4, skip to step 8.
7. Drag the suitcase "System" back to the CoreServices folder.
8. Restart your machine.
      Note: If you follow these steps with the 9.1 disc, you can then run the 9.2.2 update or the 9.2 update the regular way, just stay in OS 9. If you installed onto a different partition, the Startup Disk setting is unchanged. If you installed onto the OSX partition, your computer will reboot into Mac OS 9 until you change the setting in the Startup Disk control panel.

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The smiley :-) Turns 20!

The smiley :) has been in widespread use since the early '80s, when it was first proposed.Ê "Yet the original message in which the smiley was invented had been lost -- until now. :-)Ê After a significant effort to locate it, on September 10, 2002 the original post made by Scott Fahlman on CMU CS general bboard was retrieved by Jeff Baird from an October 1982 backup tape of the spice vax (cmu-750x).Ê Here is Scott's original post:
19-Sep-82 11:44 Scott E Fahlman :-)
From: Scott E Fahlman
I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers:
:-)
Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark things
that are NOT jokes, given current trends. For this, use :-(
See the history at: http://research.microsoft.com/~mbj/Smiley/Smiley.html

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Stonger wireless signal

Here is a link if you think you need a stronger wireless signal.
http://www.practicallynetworked.com/tools/wireless_articles_range.htm

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Photos in e-mail

On the InfinitLoop mailing list there was the following question: "I see some guys having their own photo at the right-top of their mails (looks like integrated Address Book function, and I have selected a pic, etc); can I get that, too??"
A response: "Three methods:
1. Use a Mac.com account and put the picture in webmail
2. Put images for people in ~/Library/Images/People (in the format email@address.com.tiff or create entries in your address book for them.)
3. Use the Mailpictures bundle which you can find at versiontracker"
      The last is an OS X only solution. I suspect that the second is also, although I really don't understand it. Do you? The first one seems the easiest and I will try it with OS9. Since it is from .mac, it should not be that OS dependent.

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Wireless networking

I am looking at networking two Macs to my DSL modem. Since I had an Ethernet modem given to me and the Macs are close to the modem, I will probably go the wired route. But this suggestion was made recently: "Before pulling wire, take a look at: http://smarthome.com/8683.html or to make things a little easier to do everything at once."
http://smarthome.com/8682.html

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Napster to become an "adult" site?

The Napster.com web site is up for sale and a company that claims to have the largest library of adult content said last week that it was bidding on the domain name. Private Media Group, a public company based in Barcelona, Spain, has offered one million shares of common stock in exchange for the assets, it said in a statement. Sounds like they want to capitalize on the name. Full story at: Infoworld
and at: http://www.idg.net/go.cgi?id=740716

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.Mac at 100,000

I renewed my .Mac account last Thursday. So now there is at least 100,001 who have signed. While I don't think that the service is yet worth $100, I decided to give it a try. If they fix the reliability problems, I may renew next year. If not, then I probably won't. 100,000 doesn't sound like a big number for their service, but it definitely will cut costs and that is $5 million it didn't have before.
Story on .Mac at: http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=954

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Cutting spam

Three consumer groups have filed a petition with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in an effort to put a bite into UCE (unsolicited commercial e-mail), commonly known as "spam." This effort attacks the deceptive practices involved and claim that much UCE that comes into users' mailboxes violated existing FTC rules.
      The three groups are: the Telecommunications Research and Action Center (http://www.trac.org), the National Consumers League (http://www.nclnet.org), and Consumer @ction (http://www.consumer-action.org). Lets wish them well. Anything to reduce the 75-100 piece of spam I get each day.
http://www.consumer-action.org

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Newton web server?

Yes, that is what I said. I server set up on a Newton.
See how to do it at: http://newton.splorp.com:8080/

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Chinese Mac User Group

From my good friend Ray Thompson, a co-founder of the Apple Corp of Dallas in Janaury 1978: "Check out a Mac User Group In China!
http://www.beimac.com/en/

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The "Newseum"

This is an interactive museum of news. They had been shut down, but now are reopening at a new location. They really know how to provide "information".
Check it out at: http://www.newseum.org/

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General Magic to cease operations

On September 18, Reuters had a story about General Magic going out of business. While they had a few contracts, that was not enough to keep them going. This company was originally headed by Bill Atkinson who did so much for the Mac.
Full story at: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020918/tc_nm/tech_generalmagic_dc_3

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Shattering the Five Percent Myth

I NEVER quote SpyMac without saying take this with a large grain of salt. However this story sounds reasonable. It talks about the share of installed computers and says that Macintosh has the largest single share and the Macintosh should have better that 10% of that group. Read the story for yourself and tell me what you think?
Read it at: http://www.spymac.com/comments.php?id=P215_0_5_0_C

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Real Estate Question

I got an e-mail from a reader saying: "Can I send my suggestion here? As a business owner I need to be able to operate in an Active X environment. Thinking of getting a PC just to be a realtor with a fast computer. VPC doesn't cut it."
      Does anyone have a good Mac alternative? Do you know of a web site that handles Mac/Real Estate issues? If so, please let me know.
http://www.user-groups.net/InfoManager/INFO.html

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PBS showcases Ulysses S. Grant via QuickTime

Insanely Great Mac has let us know about this production, very major production in fact on the PBS web site. Full article at: http://www.insanely-great.com/news.php?id=975
The Grant material is at:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/grant/broadband/index_qt.html

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UG Tip

There recently was a lot of discussion on the AUGB list about vendors who don't show up for promised presentations. Well, there isn't a whole lot you can do about it. If you haven't experienced a "no show" or a late notice "sorry I can't make to your meeting." You will. So plan for it. There are a number of topics that can be setup as a "just in case" presentation. Many are listed on the User Group Network. But a few you might consider:
1.) Panel discussion of "what shareware you use."
2.) Stump the expert ö Q&A panel
3.) A Mac Trivia night
4.) What Mac Utilities should you have and why?
      Many of these topics could be done as a round table discussion. Where you break up the group into a table or circle of 4-10 people and then ask each group to come up with their favorite answer to one of the above questions and report it back to the full group. I guarantee that you will get more requests for those type of meetings than another Adobe or Symantec one. (Not that they don't have their place.)
      (BTW - there are worse things than not having a vendor show up. Like having a vendor show up who is used to that "other" OS and really can't do a good presentation on the Mac. For example, I once had a Microsoft rep show up to show off Excel 4.0. She thought it was really terrific that you could bold text. Really didn't learn much about Excel or Mac Office at that meeting.)

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This Week's Quotes

"If you think you are too small to be effective,
you have never been in bed with a mosquito."
      Author Unknown

"There are two kinds of people who never amount to much:
those who cannot do what they are told,
and those who can do nothing else."
      Cyrus Curtis

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News and Info you can use...

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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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