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APPLE PHISHING ALERT

For those of you who did not see this Last Wednesday, it's important enough to run again:

Over night a wave of phishing attacks hit the servers targeting Apple Mobile Me users, and others who might not know the specifics of the phish. There were several, all from different "senders" but leading to the same address. READ THIS ALERT, and more importantly, distribute it to your user group members, and encourage them to educate everyone they know!

OCTOBER 2008

The InfoManager for October 6, 2008 ... This week: Tulsa TechFest 2008 * Beware: Fake Anti-malware Phishing * Two spam giants get smack-down * Bailout Bill in Free Searchable ebook * CLICKBOOK returns to MAC * Four Free Creative Writing Apps For The Mac * Basic Tips for Using A Computer * Remote Buddy * Game Club Cafe * Clue Classic Comes to the Mac * 7 Must-Know Mac Software Download Sites * Know Your Mac - Top Ten Secrets of a Power User * You be the Chef with SousChef * DrawIt vector-drawing * InDesign CS4 EasyCatalog * iPhone and iPod Touch Remote Control * Time for a little Optimism * Quotes; To overcome evil * . . . and more
You be the Chef with SousChef Acacia Tree Software's just released SousChef and helps you be the Chef! SousChef accesses an online cloud database made up of all other users' recipes allowing you to quickly find new and delicious recipes -- then do them yourself. Nice "ten feet away" reading function.
DrawIt vector-drawing We've written about Drawit before -- this layer-based, vector-drawing software also has a bitmap-editing layer gives you the best of two worlds and packs an impressive assortment of useful, professional grade features.
InDesign CS4 EasyCatalog Now that Adobe is launching CS4, those of you who publish database based content (Catalogs, directories, shoppers, manuals, etc.) will want this upgrade. EasyCatalog gives you dynamic, two-way, linking of data from a CSV file, XML structure or ODBC database to text or images in InDesign documents! Sweet.
iPhone and iPod Touch Remote Control Zones is a remote control for the Sonos multi-room music system. By using the iPhone WiFi connection, Zones lets anyone control your music from every room of the house and offers a convenient way to change songs, pause or adjust the volume.
Time for a little Optimism In today's world of bad news, drive-by media, and know-it-all talking heads, it's no wonder people are walking around in a state of depression. How do you feel? Did you know it's not your fault? Would you like a little optimism in your life?
Cool iPhone Stuff from September
Nokia's iPhone rival due Oct. 2 * Microsoft to Deliver an iPhone App * Apple Selling Unlocked IPhone 3G in Hong Kong * Apple iPhone closed - Google G1 open. Which is better? * Apple Won't Face Lawsuit * In court: iPhone suit dismissed * Dvorak: impact of the iPhone * and many others
Adobe Photoshop CS4 Adobe has announced the Creative Suite 4 product family, and here's the low-down in brief. If you're going to stay on the wave, you'll need to understand what all this means. They have an ever growing maze of products and features. But here it is ... dig in ...
Adobe CS4: how much will it cost? Since most of our readers already own a version of Adobe® Creative Suite® (CS, CS2, or CS3) we are posting the suggested retail for the various upgrades that are available to you. If you're upgrading TWO products, we believe you'll be coughing up at least $400 U.S. anyway, so it's actually more to your advantage to get the suite upgrade you use most. Remember, they'll be back in 18 months to upgrade you to CS5.
New Product Blueprinting Dan Adams says the only way to win in tough times is through organic growth. Companies must consistently come up with differentiated new products customers want to buy--and that means finding clarity in the "fuzzy front end" of the process.
Art Directors Toolkit If you're a professional publisher, or deal with color printing of any kind, then you know you need to stay up to date with Pantone Color System. The PANTONE GOE System has been gaining popularity and artists have been asking for ways to integrate it into their workflow. Now you can hook right in
WriteRoom for iPhone Hog Bay Software's WriteRoom for iPhone is unique in the world -- for people who want a simple place to read and write notes on their phone. It's like having a notes app, but with a lot more features.
MyWeather Mobile Although you can grab the weather on your iPhone or iPod Touch, having a stand-alone program along that does it for you is indispensable. Have full, robust weather where ever you go
iPod Access Photo Findley Designs has launched iPod Access Photo 1.6 for Mac OSX and Windows Vista/XP. This looks like a great solution for viewing and retrieving photos stored on iPod players. Dual platform, supports multiple devices!
Create Cookbooks with TasteBook and MacGourmet With Advenio you can now create cookbooks using the latest versions of MacGourmet, their popular cooking and recipe organizer, along with TasteBook. Discover, organize and share favorite recipes and turn them into personal hardcover cookbooks. For a limited time you can save 20% on your cookbooks with this code...

SEPTEMBER 2008

Tables Spread Sheet Anniversary At last -- an alternative spreadsheet for Mac. Tables enables you to organise and present data very simply. With Tables you can not only organise data but also do calculations and comparisons with it. Add, sum or multiply numbers or process data by using more than 100 functions. Data can not only represent numbers but a date or an amount, too.
Rotary Dialer for iPhone??? Now we've seen everything! After years of getting away from rotary dialing, Bakelite brings it back to the iPhone. It's sort of cool to once again spin the dial...
ImageFramer custom image framing This little gem can save hours and hours. Yes, we've known how to do this in Adobe Photoshop for years. But what ImageFramer does, are dozens of Photoshop steps instantly. Apply photo-realistic frames to digital images, drawings or any original artwork plus watermarks, batch processing
iPhone Photos to Paintings Here's a very nifty utility for you iPhone users -- Gesture lets you create digital paintings from your photos simply by dragging your finger over the photo. How cool is that
Online TV Doubles Online TV viewing has been gaining in popularity. Nearly one-fifth of American households who use the internet watch television broadcasts online, double the viewership from 2006. Here's a peek at some interesting statistics ...
Learn the Canon Digital Rebel Get to know the Digital Rebel XSi/450D and how it works -- this is a super reference for taking stunning pictures, creative tips, technical advice for capturing professional-looking images of people, landscapes, action shots, close-ups, night shots -- the ones that usually cause the most problems.
Master the Canon EOS 40D Learn to master this magnificent camera, and learn it the photographer's way; from the basics of exposure and metering to focus modes, live view, bracketing, continuous shooting, and flash photography.
Practical HDRI How to Capture the Beauty of Infrared Imagery - In image processing, computer graphics, and photography, high dynamic range imaging (HDRI) is a set of techniques that allows a greater dynamic range of exposures (the range of values between light and dark areas) than normal digital imaging techniques.
Statistics? Who understands them? These days, it seems like everything is based on statistics. But statistics are hard to understand. "Statistics in a Nutshell" give you a firm grasp of the fundamentals of statistics. The book provides hands-on understanding of how to apply statistics. Each chapter presents you with easy-to-follow descriptions illustrated by graphics, formulas, and plenty of solved examples. Hopefully, once I read it, I'll understand why they say unemployment is so bad, when it's impossible to find anyone to hire.
iPhone iPod Touch Digital Comics Digital Comics from established comic book professionals and studios are coming soon to the iPhone/iPod Touch. iVerse is announcing their Comic Reader software which will be used to create comics for iPhone/iPod Touch, and opening up for submissions from comic book hopefuls as well as established pros. Comics adapted using the iVerse Media software will be available in the iTunes App Store
MathMagic for Mac MathMagic is an equation editor for mathematical equations and symbols. First available on Mac as a Quark XTension, MathMagic ... and it does some pretty cool stuff.
Comic Banned from iTunes Murderdrome, an iPhone comic from Belfast Comic creators Al Ewing and Paul J. Holden was rejected from the iTunes App Store for breaking Apple's content guidelines. Comments from famous comic creators are appearing in support of some sort of 'ratings' system like for movies/music for the App Store.
Options Insider Mobile Investing on the iPhone? The Options Insider provides options traders, brokers, market makers, financial media and retail customers with a rare insight into the world of options.
Access Bonjour from anywhere Here's an innovative product that promises to impress even the most jaded computer road warrior -- or, for anyone that's been itching to get Bonjour working over VPN -- called ShareTool
Funtastic Photos Funtastic Photos could possibly be the most fun and most capable photo editor to come along for the Mac. The 1-Click Styles function creates stunning effects that would take hours in Photoshop or Elements. More importantly it has at least two of the most asked-for image editing techniques: tile-photo-montages and multiple image print layouts. If you take photos, then Funtastic Photos could quite possibly be the best new product since digital cameras!
Sound Studio recording and editing Sound Studio 3.5.7 is an update to the popular sound recording and editing tool for Mac. This new version provides updates to the Monbots, which are are a collection of free Sound Studio Automation Tools that perform complex tasks on multiple sound files at once.
QuickTime to Flash Have you ever wanted to convert your video files to Flash without expensive, difficult to use software programs? Macvide has come up with a tidy solution, and you'll get great results minutes after launching a video project
aMaze! turns iPhone into game aMaze!, the game that turns iPhone and iPod Touch into a classic wooden balance game Labyrinth, where players move a steel ball through a maze avoiding holes. aMaze! is unique for playing exactly like its real world prototype, by tilting device to control the labyrinth behavior and, thus, moving the ball.

AUGUST 2008

Lightwave plug-in for Poser Pro Poser Pro delivers powerful, yet easy-to-use 3D character design and animation tools that help artists integrate custom and pre-built characters into professional projects and production pipelines.
Graphics Editor for the Screen Opacity Express 1.0 is a slimmed down version of Opacity and includes most of the powerful features from Opacity like vectors, layers, variables and factories in an even simpler interface -- all of the tools artists need to create beautiful images for icons, applications and the web.
Tiled Poster printing on the Mac... In DTG and Photoshop 911 one of the most frequent requests is for help getting a photo tiled upsized for printing to a large multiple page poster. In the pre-OSX days, many Apple programs included the "Tile" feature. But, for some reason Apple decided that OS X users would be able to afford hugely expensive large format output. Well, if you can't afford $3 to $5 per square foot printing, keep reading
MailSteward and MailSteward Pro MailSteward archives email in a relational database for easy access and safe backup of all your email. Whether you manage a business, are an independent professional, or just a person with a lot of email, for legal reasons, business reasons, and personal reasons, it is essential to be able to safely archive and easily search your email.
Free iMedia Browser Here's a wonderful, free, utility that adds the familiar "media browser" experience to just about any Mac application. A stand-alone utility, the Karelia iMedia Browser lets users easily browse and drag content from their entire collection of photos, music, movies, and bookmarks.
Mastering XML Transformations XML went from a strange new idea to entrenched buzzword in record time. Its flexibility as a language for presenting structured data made it the lingua franca for sending data across the web.
Creating Great Presentations The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations by Nancy Duarte, President and CEO of Duarte Design in Mountain View, CA -- slide:ology offers practical approaches on how to create ideas, translate them into pictures, display them well, and then deliver them in your own natural way.
iPhone Golfing Plum Caddy, a new mobile application, was created for every golfer who has an iPhone or iPod touch and wants to have convenient golf mapping, scoring and statistics right in their pocket.
Geotagging for Aperture Maperture is the easiest, most intuitive way to add GPS data to your digital photos ... edit plug-in for Aperture that makes geotagging your photos a snap. Whether you're geotagging a few images, or your entire library
Canvastic for Kid Publishing Canvastic is an integrated writing, graphics and publishing tool for students in grades K-8 to version 3.5 to publish pages, books, presentations and more. This is a pretty cool resource
Batch image and photo editor Once before we mentioned a very cool program for anyone who needs to resize digital photos. Now there's a new version of ResizeMe 1.2, the batch image and photo editor for Mac OS X Tiger and Leopard., designed to help users save time and be more productive.
Take Your Best Shot Take Your Best Shot - Digital Imaging Expert Tim Grey tackles your photography q uestions with clear, informed answers to the questions serious photographers ask most often
dekePod 101 Photoshop Tips in 5 Minutes -- Deke's wacky Photoshop tips-fest portends more good times ahead -- this instructive series of video podcasts promises to be uncensored, unregulated, and frankly unlike any other videos on the topics of computer graphics
Digital Image Processing for Leopard Jade is a uniquely talented digital image processing application for Mac OS X Leopard -- state-of-the-art algorithms enhance color, contrast and dynamic range. It's easy-to-use and even does batch processing
Photo presentations FotoMagico photo presentation tool for professional photographers support for Adobe Lightroom libraries. Now includes a teleprompter that shows notes for every slide on a presenter's display and a new export option for uploading slideshow videos directly to YouTube.
New RapidWeaver themes For web gurus, this is the first commercially available RapidWeaver theme to offer three separate but very usable levels of navigation. If you use RapidWeaver, then you'll want to check this out...
Democracy Game Have you got what it takes to lead a country? Probably more than the two clowns we have to choose from this November... but here's your chance to find out
Hide from prying eyes Hide Folders 2008 is a freeware program for Mac OS X dedicated to protect documents and folders. With a click, you can conceal files and folders with all their contents.

JULY 2008

3DS Users Group Conference 3DSUG Selects Venue for Annual 3DS Users Group Conference, taking place in Daytona Beach, Florida, March 15-19, 2009. The 3DS Users Group Conference is the only event of its kind planned for the users by the users of 3D Systems, Inc equipment.
Video Trailers Beat Book Reviews Doubleday is learning that video trailers are better advertising than most print media. They've launched a contest and a series of trailers for "Rules of Deception," the new espionage thriller by Christopher Reich
Sketching on your iPhone Sketches a fun, casual drawing and annotation tool -- users will be able to jot down their notes and scribble their thoughts using their fingers, illustrating their ideas with simple but colourful diagrams, notes and sketches -- on your iPhone and iPod touch
Clipboard Evolved Mach Software Design has launched a new version of its flagship product, Clipboard Evolved -- making it fun and easy to manage all your important data.
Color Efex Pro 3.0 Grab this free update of the award-winning Color Efex Pro 3.0 photographic filters -- now supports Aperture 2.1, Nikon Capture NX 2 and Adobe Photoshop CS3 Smart Filters -- powerful, and easy filters for photo enthusiasts and professional photographers.
Flashforward The Flashforward Film Festival have announced 50 Nominees in 10 categories for Big Orange Rubber Arrow to be awarded on August 21 at the Flashforward Film Festival in San Francisco
GraphicConverter update If you're not using GraphicConverter, you should be. Now, Lemke Software has launched GraphicConverter 6.1.1, their awesome image editing and conversion utility for Mac OS X. So, you'll want to stay up to date!
Make client folders quickly Client Folder Maker is a simple to use, general purpose folder creation and management tool -- It allows the user to set up a hierarchy of folders once, then re-create that hierarchy anywhere
Silver Efex Pro photographic plug-i Nik Software has rolled out the new Silver Efex Pro photographic plug-in for use with Adobe Photoshop and Apple Aperture, the most advanced, complete, and straightforward black-and-white solution.
Batch Resize Photos with ResizeMe Dare to be Creative has released ResizeMe, a batch image and photo editor for Mac OS X Tiger and Leopard. ResizeMe can resize, scale, rotate and flip many images and photos at once.
Burn again and again Now you can re-mount the disk like a hard drive volume and add or remove files, or even edit and change files several times. BurnAgain FS 1.0.2, a free update to the CD/DVD multisession burning utility for Mac OS X.
Copyright Act Changes Anyone and everyone who publishes anything anywhere needs to follow copyright law. The U.S. Copyright Office has issued its report on whether to maintain, modify or eliminate Sections relating to the cable and satellite statutory licenses in the Copyright Act.
Tiled image of images Thousands of Mac users have been waiting on this. Over in DTG magazine and Photoshop 911 we have received literally hundreds of inquiries of where a Mac user can find such software. It's been available on Windows for some time -- but now, Limit Point Software makes it for Mac.
NetSketch Drawing on the iPhone This could be one of the coolest apps to arrive on the iPhone / iPod Touch scene to date. This young student developer could have created his retirement with NetSketch! Drawing and collaborating are cool -- but hand-written notes will probably be the revolution! No more texting? Compare notes? How cool is that?
Fashioning Technology Even if you're not into making your own fashions, this ultra-cool look at the possibilities of mixing fashion garments with technology is fantastic browsing -- it's a new DIY (Do-It-Yourself) guide from O'Reilly Media and the creators of Craft magazine
Ableton Live 7 Tips & Tricks Ableton Live usually associated with performers rather than software for Musicians, DJs, remixers, composers, and producers -- it's fast becoming the universal software studio.
New copyright technology Publishers: the U.S. Copyright Office released new technology to process applications online - eCO and "Form CO" with 2-D Barcode Technology : translation: lower filing fee of $35 for a basic claim -- fastest processing time!
Maker's Notebook for makers, crafters, backyard scientists, inventors, and engineers -- actually anyone with a creative bent -- the journal even comes with engineering graph paper packed between its sturdy electric blue cover
The Ultimate HTML Reference Do you code html? The Ultimate HTML Reference is a complete and up-to-date guide to HTML -- definitive resource covers all aspects of HTML and XHTML, including the upcoming HTML 5 specifications
Call for Speakers Graphics of the Americas 2009 is opening its call for speakers to participate in the 34th annual event being held February 26-28, 2009 at the Miami Beach Convention Center -- creatives are invited to participate...
Is your paper GREEN? NewPage Corporation has plans to launch a 'Story' marketing campaign and new Web site, www.PaperTellsAStory.com, to help educate consumers on the importance of knowing the manufacturing source of the paper used for their companies' business printing.
Google Apps Sooner or later, you'll want to learn Google Apps, which includes a word processor, spreadsheet, and other office productivity programs, now poses serious competition to Microsoft Office's dominant position on business desktop applications
Learning Flex 3 offers an engagingly unique, hands-on approach that allows you to tinker with examples right away and create your own Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) with Flex
Creative Suite 3.3 Yes, it's yet another upgrade for the Adobe Creative Suite! What? Haven't upgraded to CS2 yet? CS3? Now's the time. Creative Suite 3.3 now incorporates Acrobat 9 Pro

See: Continues on the next page

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See: 2nd Quarter, 2008 UGN NEWS

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This site is sponsored in part by:60-Second Window . . . this site paid for, in part, by: DT&G Online Magazine ~ Designers' Bookshelf ~ . . . The User Group Network is the first, and the original user group network for computer users everywhere including, Apple, Mac-Pro, Macintosh, IBM PC, Microsoft, Compaq, Amiga, BE/OS, Linux, UNIX, and other leading computer platforms. Hosting services are provided by The Graphic Design Network to serve the computing community. For information about the UGNetwork, to get involved or have your own groups' home page located at user-groups.net, please contact us. Send an e-mail message to: UGNetwork@user-groups.net Copyright 1994 - - 2005. This site is hosted by The Graphic Design Network c/o Showker Graphic Arts & Design, a Corporation of the Commonwealth of Virginia, located in Harrisonburg Virginia, in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, established in 1972.

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