Topic

RapidWeaver web site editor

Who

Bob Applegate

When

Friday September 12th 2008, 7:30pm – 10pm

Where

Room M129, Building M, ACCC Mays Landing Campus

Bob ran his own ISP for several years, and incidentally hosted ACAMUG’s web site in its early days, so he knows more than a little bit about writing and maintaining web pages. After his recent Switch to the Mac he needed an editor to help maintain his personal web sites and after looking at several possibilities, including Apple’s own iWeb, he chose RapidWeaver as his web site editor of choice. At this meeting he’ll tell us why and show it to us in action.

The raffle item for this meeting will be a full registration for RapidWeaver, an $80 value!

Related Sites

• Real Mac Software
• Your Head
• Blueball Design
• Sandvox

Presentation topics may change so be sure to verify on the day of the meeting. Got questions you’d like to have answered? Feel free to post them as comments before the meeting so the presenters have a chance to prepare.

Apple’s “Let’s Rock” event is just wrapping up. No new MacBook or MacBook Pro announcements as some were speculating, not surprising since the event’s title make it pretty clear it was all about music. Here’s a quick summary:

• New iTunes 8 (available today) adds HD TV shows and “genius” music recommendations
• NBC’s TV programming is back on the iTunes Store
• 120GB iPod classic available
• New thinner, curvier iPod nano has the accelerometer from the iPhone and iPod touch (microphone on the headphones)
• New headphones and earbuds (hope they fit better)
• New iPod touch: thinner, built-in speaker, built-in Nike shoe support
• iPhone & iPod touch OS version 2.1 will be available Friday!
• Significantly improved battery life, fewer call drops, fixed a lot of bugs (yea!)

Here is the link to the QuickTime stream of today’s event:

• Apple Special Event - September 2008

You’ll find more details on Apple’s site and here:

• Macworld: Live Update: Apple’s ‘Let’s Rock’ Event
• Let’s Rock: Ars Technica’s live Apple event coverage
• engadget: Live from Apple’s ‘Let’s Rock’ event in San Francisco
• NYT: Live Blogging the Apple Announcement

P.S.: To the millions of other people also setting up their Genius info in iTunes 8, can you just give me 3 minutes and I’ll be done. Seriously, 3 minutes and it’s all yours. I’m –>this<– close to having my “Genius results Delivered”.

The fine folks at Telestream have updated the free version of Flip4Mac to version 2.2.1. You can download it here:

• Flip4Mac WMV Download Center

(the page mentioned a trial download however the actual download should be WM Components 2.2.1.11.dmg which contains the free playback components.)

This plug-in is the Microsoft sanctioned (and supported) replacement for the old (and buggy) Windows Media Player for the Mac. Installing it allows you to watch most non-DRM (Digital Rights Managed) Windows videos you might bump into on your travels through the Net.

Note that the free version permits playback only, you’ll have to upgrade to one of the paid versions if you want to create WMV format videos or transcode them into other formats using QuickTime Player (in which case you’ll probably also need to get QuickTime Pro for $30.) If playback is all you need then you do not need to pay!

Those looking for support for additional non-Windows video and audio formats should check out:

• Perian - “The swiss-army knife for QuickTime™”

a free, open source QuickTime plug-in that provides support for many other formats.

Apple has sent press invitations for a September 9th “special event” that features a faux iPod screen titled Let’s Rock. Updated iPods seem like a relatively safe bet but there is also speculation that we may see iTunes 8.0 or even updated MacBook Pros.

Anyone planning to buy an iPod or possibly even a shiny new laptop might want to wait a week to see what drops.

• MacDailyNews: Apple ‘Let’s Rock’ event likely to debut new, cheaper iPods
• Forbes: Apple Could ‘Rock’ Cheaper iPods

Topic

iWork: Pages

Who

Carolyn Patterson

When

Friday August 8th 2008, 7:30pm – 10pm

Where

Room M129, Building M, ACCC Mays Landing Campus

A demonstration of Apple’s word processing and basic page layout solution: Pages.

• Apple’s Pages home page

Presentation topics may change so be sure to verify on the day of the meeting. Got questions you’d like to have answered? Feel free to post them as comments before the meeting so the presenters have a chance to prepare.