[WelMac] Welmac News & Update 4 Jun 08
WelMac news
news at welmac.org.nz
Tue Jun 3 20:51:49 AEST 2008
CONTENTS:
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
1. MEETING UPDATE
2. BENTO: AN EASY TO USE DATABASE APP
3. THE TRUE ORIGIN OF THE INTERNET
4. SUN INTRODUCES FREE VIRTUALIZATION SYSTEM, INCLUDES MAC
5. MAC 911 - SOLUTIONS TO YOUR MOST VEXING MAC PROBLEMS
6. FIREFOX 3 RELEASE CANDIDATE 1 POSTED
7. SPACES: GROUPING PROJECTS INSTEAD OF APPLICATIONS
8. MAC OS X 10.5.3 UPDATE RESOLVES NUMEROUS ISSUES
________________________________________________________________________________________________
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1. MEETING UPDATES
Wellington Meeting
The next main meeting of the Wellington Macintosh Society Inc. will be
held on Monday 30 June 2008. This meeting will be held in the Ante
Room on the ground level of Turnbull House, 11 Bowen Street,
Wellington from 7.10pm.
The internet has become somewhat pervasive in our daily lives and for
many, it has a positive impact and is an invaluable tool for keeping
in touch with business contacts or family members. There is however, a
negative side to this new communication medium and this months meeting
will investigate the darker side of the internet and how you can
protect yourself from being affected by the detrimental aspects of the
internet.
As usual, we'll start with our Q&A session followed by a short supper
before the main presentation.
Kapiti Area Meeting
For those members living at or near the Paraparaumu area, our next
Kapiti meeting will be held at 7.10 pm on Monday 7th July 2008 (which
also is Queens Birthday this year). It will be at the Rita King
Cottage at St Marks Church in Rosetta Road, Raumati. The topic of the
meeting will be the same as the Wellington meeting, i.e. The Dark Side
of the Internet.
Mac Basics Meeting
This meeting is an introduction to computing on a Macintosh will be
held on Monday 9 June 2008 (tonight) starting at 7pm in the Turnbull
Room on the 1st floor of Turnbull House. This months meeting will look
at the first topic in our series of three, using the Finder to
navigate and save files on your computer.
Applications Special Interest Group
Monday 16 June 2008 starting 7 pm in the Turnbull Room on the 1st
floor of Turnbull House.
These meetings will take a look at commonly used applications
(software) and this month will be the first part of three looking at
the uses and setup of basic databases and how you can make them work
for you.
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2. BENTO: AN EASY TO USE DATABASE APP
by Nancy Gravley
Bento is a database program for all of us who want to use a database
program without having to design one from scratch. The company
FileMaker is famous for - well for FileMaker. FileMaker is a complex
database application that is used by large and small businesses to
keep databases of extremely important business data organized.
I have worked with FileMaker databases on numerous occasions, and each
time I have been enormously grateful that all I had to do was fill in
the blanks, as opposed to creating the databases. They are like the
inside of my Mac. I really don't want to know how they work.
However, there have been times when I really wished I could create a
database for things that were important to me. Lets be honest here. A
Microsoft Word table just doesn't cut it.
I guess that FileMaker got wise to the fact that more and more people
are using Macs, and not all of us are running businesses so they
decided to tap into this new market by creating Bento, which is a
simple database program for the average user.
I happened to see an excellent demo of Bento a couple of days after it
was introduced in January and began using it immediately. I have also
taught a class in it so I got feedback from a number of others as
well. Everyone I know who has used it just loves it.
The application is designed to work with Leopard and it will not work
with any other version of the OS prior to Leopard. It works
intuitively with Address Book and iCal and the defaults are set for
that although you have the option to turn that off if you wish. The
first time you open Bento all of your Address Book files will
automatically be used to create a data base which you can then adjust
to meet your specific needs, selecting from the predetermined criteria
or creating criteria of your own.
Even more useful to my mind is the ability to take a flat database
that exists outside of your Address Book file and, within a matter of
moments, turn it into a useful, fluid database. For instance, I took
my Mac user group membership database, which exists in a Microsoft
Excel format and exported it into a "comma-separated value" format
(CVS), which is required by Bento. Excel allows this export with a
click, as do other applications like Numbers (part of the Apple iWorks
package). I imported the CVS version of the database format and I
instantly had a Bento database that I could individualize to meet my
special needs.
The one component of Bento that I don't find useful is the interface
with iCal because Bento can not read any subscribed calendars, i.e.,
calendars that come to your home iCal calendar via the Internet..
However, this is a personal thing because of my reliance on subscribed
calendars related to my user group activities. According to someone I
spoke with at FileMaker, this element will not change in the future
because of the basic design of Bento.
Otherwise, I think Bento is fabulous and I am so glad to have access
to a database application that I can not only easily use, but easily
modify to fit my personal needs. I can also report that it is a very
stable application - always a plus.
Company: FileMaker
Product: Bento
List Price: U.S. $49 (single license) $90 (family license)
Minimum Requirements: Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), 512 MB Ram (1 GB
recommended)
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3. THE TRUE ORIGIN OF THE INTERNET
As someone who thought that they had started using computers before
the advent of the internet, this caught my eye and made me laugh so I
thought I would pass it on.
In ancient Israel, it came to pass that a trader called Abraham of Com
did take unto himself a young wife by the name of Dot. And Dot of Com
was a comely woman, broad of shoulder and long of leg. Indeed, she
had been called 'Amazon Dot Com'.
And she said unto Abraham, her husband 'Why dost thou travel far from
town to town with thy goods when thou can trade without ever leaving
thy tent?'
And Abraham did look at her as though she were several saddle bags
short of a camel load, but simply said, 'How, dear?' And Dot replied,
'I will place drums in all the towns and drums in between to send
messages saying what you have for sale and they will reply telling you
which hath the best price. And the sale can be made on the drums and
delivery made by Uriah's Pony Stable(UPS).'
Abraham thought long and decided he would let Dot have her way with
the drums. And the drums rang out and were an immediate success.
Abraham sold all the goods he had at the top price, without ever
moving from his tent. But this success did arouse envy. A man named
Maccabees did secrete (look it up, it means to hide) himself inside
Abraham's drum and was accused of insider trading. And the young man
did take to Dot Com's trading as doth the greedy horsefly take to
camel dung. They were called Nomadic Ecclesiastical Rich Dominican
Siderites, or NERDS for short.
And lo, the land was so feverish with joy at the new riches and the
deafening sound of drums that no one noticed that the real riches were
going to the drum maker, one Brother William of Gates, who bought up
every drum company in the land. And indeed did insist on making drums
that would work only with Brother Gates' drumheads and drumsticks.
And Dot did say, 'Oh, Abraham, what we have started is being taken
over by others.'
And as Abraham looked out over the Bay of Ezekiel , or as it came to
be known 'eBay' he said 'We need a name that reflects what we are.'
And Dot replied, 'Young Ambitious Hebrew Owner Operators.'
'YAHOO!' said Abraham.
And that is how it all began.
****************************************************************************************************
4. SUN INTRODUCES FREE VIRTUALIZATION SYSTEM, INCLUDES MAC
It’s becoming quite noticeable how many people are now contemplating
or actually switching from PCs to Macs and the ability to runs Windows
applications in tandem with Mac applications has no doubt been at the
heart of this change. Up until recently, there was only three options
available to run Windows on a Mac but this has now increased to four
with a free offering coming from Sun Microsystems.
John Martellaro of the Mac Observer noted in a recent issue of
MacObserver that Sun Microsystems recently announced the formal
release of Sun xVM VirtualBox, a free and open source desktop
virtualization system for Mac OS X Leopard, Windows, Linux and Solaris
hosts. The software will compete with VMware Fusion and Parallels
Desktop on the Macintosh platform. On the Mac, it supports Windows,
Linux and Solaris VM clients.
The Mac Observer interviewed Sun's Vijay Sarathy, Senior Director of
Marketing for Sun xVM, to get the details.
In February, 2008 Sun bought Innotek, the makers of the highly
regarded VirtualBox, for an undisclosed sum in order to acquire the
technology. VirtualBox is just part of a platform of several products
under the xVM name and includes both the VirtualBox for desktop
clients and the broader xVM virtualization and management portfolio.
That includes the Sun xVM Ops Center and the Sun xVM Server scheduled
for release in the Summer of 2008.
The VirtualBox
The desktop component, the xVM VirtualBox, has been under development
for some time and is now at version 1.6. Since May 2, when a preview
went live, there have been over 5 million downloads. Like current
commercial products, VirtualBox uses hypervisor technology and uses
the host-client technique, that is, there is one major host OS and the
rest of the OSes run as guests under the host. The software is open
source and released under the GPLv2 license for personal use.
VirtualBox supports a huge range of host and guest operating systems
enabling users to run everything from the latest Microsoft Vista and
OpenSolaris applications to old Windows 98, OS2 or DOS alongside Apple
applications on an Intel Mac for example. A mere 20 megabyte download,
xVM VirtualBox software is incredibly compact and efficient and
installs in less than five minutes, according to Sun.
The Mac version requires Leopard, and Sun honors the Apple license for
Mac OS X restricting OS X clients from running on, say, Linux hosts.
Other than that, all the other host-client pairings are possible, and
while Mr. Sarathy didn't have details of the Linux OSes, Sun says that
just about any X86 client OS is supported. Sun's VP of Engineering for
xVM, Steve Wilson, recently wrote about his experiences with Ubuntu on
a Mac. VirtualBox has the advantage running under Solaris as the host
OS, something the commercial competitors don't support at this time.
Features
Features include support for bridged Ethernet or NAT, USB 2 support
with filter support to limit which host devices the guest OS can see,
multi-screen resolutions so that guest OSes can span multiple monitors
and CD/DVD passthrough. Shared folders with any client can be set up
to share data across OSes, but the system can also be set up to impose
zero data leakage between OSes for security.
Virtual Box allows multiple checkpoints so that if, in a high security
environment, the VM client becomes compromised, the state of the OS
can be reset to a previous point, a "good state" in time.
Mr. Sarathy wasn't able to provide details of the extent to which the
memory and capabilities of advanced graphics cards are supported via
the hypervisor. It's always an issue for hypervisors on kernel-based
systems, and when TMO finds out more, we'll pass it along.
One of the key features of the xVM Virtual Box is that APIs are
exposed at every level. This allows solution providers and OEMs to
build revenue-generating custom solutions such as secure desktop
services.
Sun has posted a page that contains all the known reviews of the
VirtualBox.
Server Products
As mentioned above, the desktop xVM VirtualBox for personal use is
just an entry point for a family of products. Sun is also developing
advanced server solutions that will run on the bare metal, work at the
enterprise level, and afford "live migration." That is, if the system
detects a hardware failure, the running OS can immediately migrate to
new hardware and continue running.
The family of enterprise-grade products is, of course, key to the
business model and is what allows Sun to offer the Desktop VirtualBox
for free as an introduction to the family of Sun technologies.
"Sun xVM VirtualBox is transforming the way people develop software,"
said Steve Wilson, vice president for xVM, Sun Microsystems.
"Developers no longer need to be tethered to big testing labs. xVM
VirtualBox software empowers developers to create multiple virtual
machines, network them together and deploy them using their favorite
operating system - all from a single laptop. With our xVM family of
products, Sun delivers technologies to meet every virtualization need
from the desktop to the data center."
Downloading
Sun's xVM Virtual Box 1.6 can be downloaded free after agreeing to the
license. On the Mac, it requires OS X Leopard and 2 GB of RAM is
recommended.
************************************************************************
MAC 911 - SOLUTIONS TO YOUR MOST VEXING MAC PROBLEMS
by Christopher Breen
Sending iCal invites to the many
Reader C wishes to communicate with several people at once. The
initialed one writes:
Can I make iCal email an event to more than one user?
Sure. It wouldn't be much of a calendar application if it couldn't. It
can do this in a couple of ways.
In Leopard's version of iCal, just click on the event and press
Command- E to edit it. Click the Add Attendees link and in the field
that appears, type the name of a person you'd like to invite. If that
person appears in Address Book (and has an email address), iCal will
autofill the email address for you. If they aren't in Address Book,
just type the email address.
To enter another address, type a comma and type the new name (if
they're in Address Book) or address. Repeat as necessary. When you've
finished entering addresses, press the Return key and then click the
Send button. Mail will launch and your invitations will be sent to the
addresses you entered in the Attendees field.
You can also add multiple attendees by dragging several selected
contacts or a group directly from Address Book onto the Add Attendees
link. This is useful when you want to quickly add all the members of
your platoon, bridge club, or extended family.
Mail and its hidden headers
Like many people, reader S. B. is concerned about spam. He writes:
Mail's junk mail filters work pretty well for my use, but sometimes I
need to open a message in the junk mail folder to determine if it is
really spam or if it is coming from a new contact. I always keep the
preview pane closed. In older programs I could view long headers or
the raw source without opening the actual message. But in Mail, that
is not an option, as these menu items are grayed out until you open
the message. Is there a way around this? I realize that the junk mail
filter does not initially load images, but I don't know if it still
pings the spammer's server.
As you've observed, Mail doesn't offer that option. Microsoft
Entourage lets you view both long headers as well as the message's raw
source in a separate window. And Mozilla Thunderbird, while it won't
show headers with the preview closed, it will display the message's
raw source.
But before you dash off to install a different email application,
let's examine the real threat here. And that threat is HTML links--
particularly links to graphics that, when loaded, send a little "yoo
hoo!" message to the spammer, letting them know that they've found a
live one. To keep these images at bay in Mail, choose Mail ->
Preferences, click the Viewing tab, and make sure that the Display
Remote Images in HTML Messages option is unchecked. This should keep
you safe.
All you have to do from this point on is to be careful about loading
images or clicking links in your messages. If you don't trust or don't
know the source, take what you can from the text and leave the links
and potential graphics alone.
If you're still spooked by the idea of viewing headers along with a
preview of a message--even without HTML turned on--you can follow this
little tip from Macworld's Gemmeister, Dan Frakes: Give Limit Point
Software's MailCM a try. This is a contextual menu plugin/pref pane
that, among other things, lets you copy a message's headers without
opening or previewing the message. Of course you'll have to then paste
that header into a text document or empty email message in order to
examine its contents, which seems like an incredible pain in the neck
to me. But then, I'm not easily spooked.
The search-by-label blues
Despite his elders' admonition that labeling just isn't cool, reader
Jon Co would like to put Leopard's labels to good use. He writes:
In Leopard is there a way to search by label? It seems the new Command-
F search has dropped it as an option and I have about a thousand
pictures labeled blue so I can keep them in a smart folder. Now when I
open that folder, it's a collection of everything. Is there some
hidden way to search by label or am I missing something?
It is hidden and therefore, yes, you are missing something.
When you choose File -> New Smart Folder and, in the New Smart Folder
window, click the Plus (+) button, you can be forgiven for thinking
that Leopard is pretty miserly about what it allows you to search for.
Click the pop-up menu labeled Kind and you see just Kind, Last Opened
Date, Last Modified Date, Created Date, Name Contents, and Size.
Ah, but take a look at that promising Other... entry at the bottom of
the list. Choose that and a rich, searchable world opens.
Specifically, when the search attribute sheet appears, you want to
enter Label in the Search field. Do so and you'll find that File Label
appears as the sole entry. Select it and click OK. The first condition
in your search now reads File Label followed by Leopard's array of
label colors. Click the blue color and all items you've labeled blue
will appear in the window. Click the Save button and you've got a
smart folder that contains all blue-labeled items.
****************************************************************************************************
6. FIREFOX 3 RELEASE CANDIDATE 1 POSTED
According the John Martellaro of the MacObserver, after an extended
beta test period, the Mozilla Group has released Firefox 3, RC1 for
Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. The release is supported in over 45
languages.
New features and changes in this release include:
Improvements to the user interface based on user feedback, including
changes to the look and feel on Windows Vista, Windows XP, Mac OS X
and Linux.
Changes and fixes for new features such as the location bar
autocomplete, bookmark backup and restore, full page zoom, and others,
based on feedback from our community.
Fixes and improvements to platform features to improve security, web
compatibility and stability.
Continued performance improvements: changes to our JavaScript engine
as well as profile guided optimization continues to improve
performance over previous releases as measured by the popular
SunSpider test from Apple, and in the speed of web applications like
Google Mail and Zoho Office.
The release is immediately available for download, and has a What's
New, release notes and known issues page.
The final release is expected in June.
Firefox is a free application. The Mac version requires OS X Tiger or
later.
****************************************************************************************************
7. SPACES: GROUPING PROJECTS INSTEAD OF APPLICATIONS
by Jeff Gamet
Mac OS X 10.5 introduced Spaces, which lets users create virtual
Desktops and overcome the limited Desktop real estate imposed by
computer displays. The problem was that Spaces pushed an "application
per workspace" instead of a "project per workspace" mindset, but Mac
OS X 10.5.3 fixes that with little more than a mouse click.
To change the default Spaces behavior so it is easier to group items
based on project instead of application, do this:
• Choose Apple menu > System Preferences to launch the System
Preferences application.
• Select Expose & Spaces.
• Click the Spaces tab.
• Uncheck When switching to an application, switch to a space with
open windows for the application.
That cryptic sounding setting makes a big change in the way Spaces
works: Now Spaces will leave you in the current space when you switch
applications, even if the application does not have any open windows
in the currently active space. Jumping to a different space becomes an
intentional action instead of a side effect from switching active
applications.
The upside is that it's much easier to group document windows together
based on project. For example, you could have windows open in the same
space for FileMaker Pro, Microsoft Word, and Safari that all relate to
a single project. If you switch to a different space and then switch
to Microsoft Word for a different project, you won't jump back to the
first space that Word was launched in.
Another bonus is that Spaces now performs in a way that's more
familiar to Unix and Linux users, and it adds some flexibility to the
way Spaces works for the rest of us.
****************************************************************************************************
8. MAC OS X 10.5.3 UPDATE RESOLVES NUMEROUS ISSUES
by Adam C. Engst <ace at tidbits.com>
Apple has released Mac OS X 10.5.3 Update to fix a wide variety of
problems in key Leopard features and to block numerous security
vulnerabilities (see "Security Update 2008-003 / Mac OS X 10.5.3 Fix
Flaws," 2008-05-29). Although Apple does provide more detail about
what was changed than is normal for the company, the release notes
are still rather terse and seldom give any indication of the severity
or frequency of the bugs that were fixed.
That said, it strikes me as important that 10.5.3:
* Addresses an issue with stuttering video and audio playback on
certain USB devices.
* Fixes an issue in which certain attached hard drives may not show
up in the Finder.
* Addresses reliability issues with screen sharing via iChat.
* Addresses stability issues when dragging large attachments into a
message in Mail.
But honestly, the fixes that I'm most interested in seeing are
those related to wireless networking and to Time Machine, because
basic network reliability is essential in today's world, and because
backup software has to be rock solid or users will lose faith in it.
Only two specific fixes are listed for AirPort, including
improvements to 802.1X behavior and reliability, and improved
reliability when using Time Capsule via AirPort. However, I've heard
rumblings from users that 10.5.3 may also fix other problems that had
caused network slowdowns and more.
10.5.3 includes a number of Time Machine-related fixes, including
better compatibility with Time Capsule, issues related to backing up
laptops running on battery power, compatibility problems with
Aperture 2, reliability problems when performing a full restore, and
reliable storage of Mail messages and attachments. I also gather that
a problem that could cause a Time Machine sparse image file to become
damaged has been fixed. In addition, the update eliminates a spurious
alert message about a backup volume lacking enough free space and
avoids disabling function keys after using Time Machine.
The closest I can find to a new feature in 10.5.3 is additional raw
image support for several unspecified cameras; see Apple's Raw
Support page for Aperture for the current list. Apple historically
adds support for new digital cameras in operating system updates, so
this isn't surprising. What is surprising is the subsequent
appearance of Digital Camera RAW Compatibility Update 2.1, which adds
support for new cameras such as the Canon EOS Digital Rebel XSi, a
separate 2.4 MB update that appeared shortly after the 10.5.3 update.
<http://www.apple.com/aperture/specs/raw.html>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/digitalcamerarawcompatibilityupdate21.html
>
As with any system update, we recommend making a backup of your
startup hard drive before installation. When Apple applies changes to
so many areas of the operating system, some incompatibilities are
bound to crop up. For example, we received reports of file corruption
in Photoshop CS2 and CS3 when saving image files stored on a network
volume. (According to feedback in Adobe's online support forums, a
workaround to the problem is to choose Save As instead of Save when
saving the file.) As is always the case, there are lots of complaints
about unusual problems in Apple's discussion forums, so if you're
seeing crashes or other troublesome behavior, it's worth looking for
fellow sufferers and possible solutions there.
<http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=7279472�>
<http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.59b56503>
<http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=235>
Mac OS X 10.5.3 Update is available via Software Update and as both
delta (420 MB, for updating from Mac OS 10.5.2) and combo (536 MB,
for updating from any previous version of Mac OS X 10.5) standalone
updaters. The size you see in Software Update may vary, but will
likely be smaller; my MacBook reported that it needed to download
only 198 MB. Note that you must have at least 1.5 GB of free space to
install and optimize the update - you can usually free a lot of space
in use by virtual memory swap files merely by restarting.
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macosx1053update.html>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macosx1053comboupdate.html>
Shortly after the release of Mac OS X 10.5.3 Update, Apple also
took the wraps off Mac OS X Server 10.5.3 Update, which fixes
numerous issues specific to Leopard Server. Areas seeing improvements
include file services, directory services, the Active Directory
Plugin, client management, collaboration services, DHCP service, DNS
service, mail service, Portable Home Directory synchronization,
Server Assistant, System Image Utility, and Workgroup Manager.
<http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1142>
Mac OS X Server 10.5.3 Update is available via Software Update or
as either delta (489 MB) or combo (632 MB) standalone updates.
Servers running Mac OS X Server 10.5.3 can be administered only with
the 10.5.3 versions of Server Admin Tools, which are included in Mac
OS X Server 10.5.3 Update and are also available as a standalone
download.
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/macosxserver1053update.html>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/
macosxserver1053comboupdate.html>
<http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1283>
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/serveradmintools1053.html>
****************************************************************************************************
Some articles above have been reprinted with permission from TidBITS.
TidBITS has offered more than ten years of thoughtful commentary on
Macintosh and Internet topics. For free email subscriptions and access
to the entire TidBITS archive, visit www.tidbits.com.
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