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WEDNESDAY
May 28th, 2008
Q&A
6:00-6:30 PM
Beginner's SIG
6:30-7:00 PM
Main Program begins 7:00 PM
AGENDA:
TBA but it will be great!
We look forward to seeing you there.
Bring a friend!
Miami Museum
of Science
3280 South Miami Ave.
Miami FL
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GCMac Board Meeting
Wednesday May 14th 2008
7:30 PM
Location JJs Diner
(1450 S Dixie Hwy, across from U of M)
All GCMac Members Welcome |
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Check the
MUG Center
for User Group Deals.
 
Latest Joy of Tech!
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Join the GC Mac Listserver!
If you've been longing to get into a discussion with your fellow Mac enthusiasts, we've got the place: the new Gold Coast Mac listserver.
You can sign up directly from the website, without having to know any complicated set-up commands.
Simply visit the signup page, read the rules for using the service, click "Agree", and send the resulting e-mail. It's just that easy!
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News Today
Edited by Doug Noble
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 Contrary to what some members might think, GCMAC's exciting monthly programs don't just "happen". Each presentation takes careful pre-planning, research and equipment setup. The video and sound system has to be connected each month. Our newsletter does not write, layout and print itself. The website has to be updated. Contracts with the museum are negotiated. Food is purchased and brought to meetings. SIG venues are sought out, and SIG presentations planned and presented. Vendors are solicited for giveaways. Items are purchased for drawings. The listserv is hosted and managed. The list goes on ....
All these things and more are virtually all accomplished by board members. Unpaid volunteers with busy lives and work schedules. Some members, like Marian Wertalka, a previous Volunteer of the Month, take it upon themselves to create programs like her fabulous Recycling program. Rose Lynn, though now living in South Carolina, remains our Ambassador. YOU TOO can be a volunteer. Come along to one of our board meetings, enjoy food and banter, get some tech questions answered by our self-proclaimed "experts", offer your ideas, and learn how you can contribute. Tell us what we could do better (and help us do it!). Write articles for the newsletter. Review a book. Help setup and teardown. Offer ways to spread the word to grow our membership.
Nominate someone you feel has been especially helpful to Gold Coast Mac! Contact any board member.
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Have Mac Questions? We've Got The Answers!
Welcome to Gold Coast Mac, South Florida's oldest and most active Macintosh User Group. Whether you are a new Mac user or a veteran, we're sure to be of use to you.
We invite you to our monthly meetings (no charge for entry), where we share tips on being more productive, teach beginners and switchers the Mac basics, demonstrate cool new products, get our problems solved, ask for advice and network with other Mac users.
No question is too basic! Our Special Interest Groups, (SIGs) deal with specific products and subjects. Our active Listserv means instant access to experts when you need help is just an email away. And GCMAC membership is just $40 a year. Where else can you find all this - at any price?
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| April 2008 Esver Camacho demonstrated the latest version Photoshop Elements. More to come ... |
| March 2008 - If you were one of the 8 people who attended the Advanced User SIG this month, you received a preview of André Perwin's presentation on Backing Up Your Mac. But if you missed it, never fear. Those who attended agreed, this is information YOU DON'T WANT TO MISS! So André kindly agreed to a repeat performance, and will be providing a modified version of his presentation to the general membership, with lots of valuable information on backup strategies. So if you want to know how to protect yourself from losing all your data in the crash that will inevitably happen some day... this is your opportunity. In addition, Esver will be showing PageSender from SmileOnMyMac, a valuable utility if you want to send faxes from your computer, it provides enhanced functionality over the built in fax capabilities. And wait, there's more! Andre will also show the latest Hot Disk, which will be on sale. Finally, Q&A starts at 6pm, and at the Beginners SIG at 6.30 pm, Esver will once more offer "must have" info for beginners and not-so beginners alike. So be there or you will miss out! And remember, we will have door prizes to be won - but you must be a member to enter the drawing. If you are a non-member, sign up at the front desk when you arrive to join and get your ticket and a fabulous GCMAC mug.
Also, be aware that the museum is hosting a fashion show on the same day. Our meeting is free but their show is not. So our members and guests will have to wear wrist bands so they can enter and leave
freely. |
| February 2008 - Last month at our general meeting on Wednesday 27th February at the Museum of Science, we were pleased to host a well received presentation from Jean MacDonald of creative productivity software vendor SmileOnMyMac, she showed a number of their products including PDF Pen. And in addition, we demonstrated the long awaited updated to one of the mainstay products of your Mac life, Microsoft Office 2008. |
| January Meeting Wrap-up Our January meeting kicked off with the MacWorld keynote speech, edited down to the highlights by Dave Game. Doug Noble gave a demo of Bento, the new personal database (for Leopard only) from Filemaker, and John Stephen stepped into fill Charlie's Carlon's traditional spot, offering us a great presentation of interesting things he found at MacWorld. And the meeting was accompanied by complimentary cofee and snacks. We had a good turnout, welcoming back old friends as well as making some new ones. |
Happy New Year! We had an awesome Xmas meeting. There was a fabulous table full of Christmas snacks thanks to Mr and Mrs Game and some other contributors. Andre did a hot disk, which we all got to take home, thanks!!! In addition, we once agan welcomed James Lee of Tropical Software, the developer of TopX Notes - in spite of car troubles - and he showed the latest and greatest features of this very useful information organizer. In addition we had some wonderful holiday gift bags put together by Santa Dave and his Elves Laura and Yusty. Mrs. Claus made an appearance, (actually the very lovely Christina Camacho in a very fetching Fredericks of Hollywood Santa outfit... now we know why Esver is always smiling!) If you received a gift bag with software or a book, please submit a short review of the product you received so we can publish in Tropical Mac. The vendors who donate these to GCM appreciate our support as much as we appreciate them.
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Falls Apple Store now open
Bigger, better than ever
Finally, after almost three months, the newly refurbished Apple Store at The Falls opened on November 10th and we don't have to cram into that tiny hole in the wall store! Significant changes in the new store design can be seen. Walls are silver/metallic. Shelves stretch up to the ceiling. Large tables replace the kidney shaped displays. The Genius Bar has been enlarged, stretching across the back of the store, with three large LCD monitors replacing the big screen theater for workshops. No bench seats either for sitting down to grab some free WiFi - that space has been reclaimed for more retail (read iPod) space. There are some stools to sit on at machines near the Genius Bar, this is also where the Geniuses conduct "Pro" one-on-one training. The whole store has been moved to the left, the hidden "bowling alley" down the left of the store (previously used for inventory storage) is gone, so that the annoying pillar in the middle of the store could be eliminated. Also gone is the checkout desk at the front. Now store employees carry small wireless terminals, if you pay by credit card they can handle the sale anywhere in the store. (If you want to stop the entire store (as in the VISA card ad), you can still pay by cash or check at the back of the store, they have a couple of terminals at the end of the Genius bar.) One big loss - no public restrooms! But there are many more computers and iPods to play with, and you can still surf the net and check your email.
| In case you've been living in a cave and haven't heard, Leopard has revealed his spots!!!  The latest in the "Big Cat" series, Apple's latest incarnation of OS X, version 10.5, dubbed Lepoard, is finally here, released Friday October 26th. Out of aorund 300 new features and improvements, these are Apple's "top 10". See all the hot features demonstrated at GCM's next meeting, October 31st.
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| 1 |
Desktop: Just one look at the desktop in Mac OS X Leopard says you've arrived
someplace new. From the menu bar to the stunning new Dock, Leopard is
designed to help you enjoy the time you spend at your computer - and help you
get more out of it. Stacks give you fast access to a folder of files, and
the semitransparent menu bar and reflective 3D Dock perfectly frame your
desktop picture. |
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Finder: Now browsing the files on your Mac is as easy as browsing music in iTunes.
That's the idea behind the new Finder in Leopard. You can access everything
on your system by flipping through your files using Cover Flow or by
clicking items in an iTunes-style sidebar. |
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Quick Look: Using Quick Look in Leopard, you can view the contents of a file without
even opening it. Flip through multipage documents. Watch full-screen video.
See entire Keynote presentations. With a single click.
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Time Machine: Time Machine is the breakthrough automatic backup that's built right into
Mac OS X. It keeps an up-to-date copy of everything on your Mac - digital
photos, music, movies, TV shows, and documents. Now, if you ever have the
need, you can easily go back in time to recover anything. (Time Machine
requires an external hard drive.) |
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Mail: Leopard transforms email into personalized stationery. Notes you can access
anywhere. To-dos that change as your errands do. For everything you do with
email - and some things you haven't thought of yet - there's Mail. And now you
can set up a new Mail account in one easy step. Just enter your current
email address and password and let Mail do the rest. (Simple setup only
works with select email providers, such as Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, and AOL
Mail.)
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iChat: Filled with fun new features, iChat turns any video chat into an event.
Video backdrops, Photo Booth effects, photo slideshows, Keynote
presentations, even movies on your Mac - you can share it all using iChat.
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| 7 |
Spaces: You do a lot on your Mac. So how do you keep order when projects pile up?
Easy. Use Spaces to group your application windows and banish clutter
completely. Leopard gives you a space for everything and makes it easy to
switch between your spaces.
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| 8 |
Safari: Now your favorite web browser is also the fastest on the Mac. With page load
speeds that outperform every other major browser on the Mac, Safari for
Leopard also introduces a few new features to the mix. Easily find inline
text, unleash new tabbed browsing features, take advantage of new PDF
controls, create widgets from websites, and much more.
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| 9 |
Parental Controls: As a parent, you want your kids to have a safe and happy experience on the
computer. Leopard keeps an eye out even when you can't. With a simple setup,
you can manage, monitor, and control the time your kids spend on the Mac,
the sites they visit, and the people they chat with. |
| 10 |
Boot Camp: Leopard is the world's most advanced operating system. So advanced, it even
lets you run Windows if there's a PC application you need to use. Just get a
copy of Windows and start up Boot Camp, now included with Leopard. Setup is
simple and straightforward - just as you'd expect with a Mac.
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GCMAC makes member
"114% more intelligent" !
From the GCMAC Listserv What a great meeting we had tonight. If you are a member and missed this
meeting you really need to make time in the months to come and get back to
the GCMac family. It always amazes me how much I learn at all the meetings,
not to mention that over the years I have made some great friends in GCMac.
The presentations tonight were exceptional. I can't wait to dig into iLife
'08 as well as iWork '08. I bought a copy prior to the meeting but someone
actually won a free copy of iLife tonight at the meeting. I came home and
immediately downloaded Paparazzi (a freeware screen capture program that lets you capture complete web page, no matter how long, to a JPG or PDF [Ed]) because of another great presentation.
Thanks to all of the presenters for making me '114%' more intelligent than I
was before the meeting. I look forward to seeing everyone next month... :)
Bob Lasky, GCM Member In addition to presentations of iMovie '08, iPhoto '08, Numbers and Paparazzi, we also gave away a new inkjet printer generously donated by Marian Wertalka, and a copy of iLife '08. Two winners went home happy! Free snacks and coffee provided by GCMAC were also served. Empty ink cartridges and cell phones were collected for recycling. And new and renewing members went home with the fabulous new green GCMAC mug!
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Get DSL Service On the Cheap!
AFor those of us still on dial-up, there was a recent news item that might be of interest: AT&T is offering a $10.00 per month DSL term plan to Bellsouth customers who have not previously subscribed to DSL.
The yearly term plan is the same as the basic plan with speeds up to 768 Kbps. This plan is the result of a concession AT&T made to the FTC, in order for AT&T to become the new owners of BellSouth, and Cingular.
The plan is obscured somewhat on the internet services page - you will have to scroll down towards the bottom of the page to see the link for "Term contract plans available."
http://www.bellsouth.com/consumer/inetsrvcs/index.html
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Page last updated Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Comments? Questions? Contact the Webmaster
Copyright © 2007 Gold Coast Mac, Inc.
All Rights Reserved Worldwide
Gold Coast Mac, Inc is a not for profit educational organization.
All trademarks referenced herein are the property
of their respective owner and are used only to their benefit.
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Apple Pro Training Series: Aperture 1.5