Facilitating learning and networking within the local Macintosh User Community since 1984

Previous Mac2MUG Meeting Highlights

Our meetings generate lots of discussion and shared information! On this page we post meeting highlights, links and other information which members in attendance found helpful.

July 2010 was Our Annual Non-Meeting Meeting Month

June 2010 Meeting Featured: Dave Marra from Apple Computer

  • Our June meeting was quite an exciting event. We hosted Dave Marra from Apple Computer! Dave gave us a dynamite presentation on Snow Leopard and the iPad. The only downside to the meeting was that it wasn’t long enough as we could have listened to Dave speak all day!
  • View Rob’s June 2010 Meeting Announcement for Dave Marra
  • Dave Marra
  • Dave Marra

May 2010 Meeting Topic: Avery DesignPro

  • Our May meeting featured a presentation by Rob Ellis on how to use Avery DesignPro software to make labels, dividers, CD inserts and even business cards and T-shirt transfers. A free raffle was part of the presentation, and several Mac2MUG members were happy to take home their very own Avery products. Each person attending the meeting also received a free Avery software installation CD!
  • View Rob’s May 2010 Meeting Announcement for Avery DesignPro

April 2010 Meeting Topic: Running a Business Using Macs

  • Our April meeting featured a presentation by Michael Vahila on how he uses Macintosh computers and Mac software to run his business. Michael showed us how he uses templates in Pages and Keynote to make marketing his business and presenting to groups a breeze. We talked about using iCal for schedules, and when doing things the old fashioned way (i.e. pencil & paper) is sometimes more efficient than using a computer! Michael also shared a variety of great tips and philosophies about how to start a business and make it successful.
  • View Rob’s April 2010 Meeting Announcement for Running a Business Using Macs

March 2010 Meeting Topic: Make Your Web Browser Soar

Our March meeting featured the Browsers Firefox and Chrome. We were treated to numerous great add-ons and extensions - all ways to enhance the browing experience.

Featured Firefox Add-Ons:

  • Answers - Allows you to option-click any word on a web page for a definition or information
  • CoLT - Allows you to copy the text of a link, a page title and its link, and more
  • Adblock Plus - Successfully blocks most ads from websites. Ads that do get through can be added so that they will also be blocked
  • Video DownloadHelper - allows you to download "non-downloadable" multimedia such as YouTube videos, and optionally convert them to other formats
  • ColorfulTabs - Makes it easy to differentiate among open tabs by coloring the tabs in different colors
  • Check4Change - Periodically checks a web page for changes or updates
  • Screengrab - Saves or copies an entire web page or a selected area, as a graphic
  • gTranslator - Status bar icon which simplifies the Google translation of entire webpages, in the same way as the Chrome add-on, Google Translate
  • TinEye - Amazing add-on which uses cutting-edge image recognition technology to find other versions of a web image.
  • Cooliris - Allows you to view the results of searches of Google Images, YouTube, Flickr, and others, in a dazzling “3D wal” of images
  • Firefox add-ons main page

Featured Chrome Add-Ons:

February 2010 Meeting Topic: Graphic Design 101

  • Our February meeting featured Graphic Design 101 presented by Janet Kullman. Janet showed us the difference between vector and raster graphics and their importance in print and web applications. We saw some great design tricks as Janet did her magic in Freehand, Illustrator and Photoshop. In addition, we learned about two lower-end vector graphic editing applications for everyday use: DrawIt ($38) and Inkscape (free.)
  • If you would like to obtain FreeHand MX (demonstrated by Janet) and a free license, here is a forum link which discusses how to do that. (Thanks to Mac2MUG member Andy Pyle for finding the Freehand link!)
  • Mac2Mug Feb 2010 meetingRob Ellis Bellied Up to the Sidebar and showed us some great routes to speedy navigation on our Macs. Do you find yourself continually digging through folders to find that special file? Dig no more - put it on the Sidebar! Adding folders to your sidebar is as easy as using the Finder Preferences or simply dragging them on and off. You can then find folders easily from virtually any window you open.
  • View Rob’s February 2010 Meeting Announcement for Graphic Design 101

January 2010 Meeting Topic: Disk Utilities

  • Our January meeting featured some great Disk Utilities to keep your Mac running smoothly. Tom Davis showed us: Disk Utility, Macaroni, TechTool Deluxe and Drive Genius. Disk Utility, which comes with every Mac, is a valuable tool and should be part of any user’s regular computer maintenance routine. Macaroni (from www.atomicbird.com) performs many unix clean-up functions automatically. Tech Tool runs hardware diagnostics and is often used by Apple to help you diagnose computer problems over the phone. Drive Genius (www.prosoftengineering.com) performs many clean-up and optimization tasks including disk defragmentation.
  • Mike Schott showed us Disk Warrior and a free download called Onyx. Disk Warrier (www.alsoft.com) performs permission repairs and rebuilds system directories. Onyx is a many-featured utility that performs clean-up tasks and permissions repair among other options. One great feature of Onyx is geared towards environments where Macs and PCs share disk or server space. Onyx allows Mac users to hide those annoying additional little DS_ files which show up when PC users look up Mac files.
  • View Rob’s January 2010 Meeting Announcement for Disk Utilities

December 2009 Meeting Topic: TextEdit - Hotrodded

  • Our December meeting topic was the The Hidden Features of TextEdit, by Rob Ellis. And believe us - there are many more features to TextEdit than you imagined!
  • We learned that with TextEdit, you can perform many of the word processing functions of other, costly applications. One can add hot links, images, do text formatting (including drop shadows!) and much more. Rob also showed us how to download free Service software that adds yet another dimension of functionality to TextEdit. Word Service is a free download, and also works in other applications which make use of Apple’s Services Menu option (under the TextEdit menu).
  • View Rob’s December 2009 Meeting Announcement for TextEdit

November 2009 Meeting Topic: Savvy Social Networking

  • Our November meeting featured the Social Networking sites of Twitter and Facebook. We learned about Tweetdeck - a great application to manage both Twitter and Facebook exchanges. We also talked about the differences between these two approaches to social connections on the web.
  • In our Back to Mac Basics Rob Ellis taught us all about icons - the history of icons on the Mac, how to make them, how to change them and how much more efficient better icons can make using a computer for work or fun. Rob’s presentation featured three links to free icons: Iconfactory, interfacelift, and Pixelgirl.
  • View Rob’s November 2009 Meeting Announcement for Social Networking

October 2009 Meeting Topic: Snow Leopard

September 2009 Meeting Topic: Widget World

August 2009 Meeting Topic: Brand Yourself on the Web

  • Our August meeting was all about Branding Yourself on the Web - How to Get a Web Presence for Free! Topics covered included blogs, with the two main free blog services being blogger.com and wordpress.com. We also looked at Squidoo Lens which are free web pages anyone can use. At the end of meeting several more places to create a free website were mentioned: weebly.com, webs.com and yola.com.
  • Raffle tickets will be on sale again at our next meeting - Win a 5-user iLife package! Tickets are $5 each, or 3 for $10.
  • View Rob’s August 2009 Meeting Announcement for Web Branding

June 2009 Meeting Topic: It’s a Wonderful iLife - Part II

  • Another super presentation - this time on iWeb and iPhoto! Publishing your own website has never been easier or more fun! And our Back to Mac Basics session on System Preferences was a real eye opener for beginners and seasoned Mac users alike.
  • Congratulations to the winners of our June Raffle! The winner received the book “YouTube: An Insider’s Guide to Climbing the Charts”, by Alan Lastufka and Michael W. Dean. Photo coming soon!
  • View Rob’s June 2009 Meeting Announcement for iLife, Part 2

May 2009 Meeting Topic: It’s a Wonderful iLife - Part I

  • This was a great presentation on iMovie and iDVD! Who'd have thought it could be so easy to make home movies now? And our Back to Mac Basics session, What’s Up Dock, was a big hit for all things obvious and not so obvious on the Mac Dock.
  • may 09 raffle winnersAnd congratulations to the winners of our May Raffle! Mac2MUG members Bill and Sandy Stark won “Switching to the Mac, Leopard Edition - The Missing Manual”, by David Pogue. Published by O’Reilly and written by one of the most popular authors of Macintosh help books, Switching to the Mac guides one through every step in the journey from Windows to Mac.
  • View Rob’s May 2009 Meeting Announcement for iLife, Part 1

April 2009 Meeting Topic: Automator

  • From Apple - Doing small tasks over and over again can really bog down your productivity. Mac OS X comes with Automator, your own personal robotic assistant that will take care of whatever task you give it.

Mar 2009 Meeting Topic: Picasa

  • From Google - Organize, edit and share photoe and albums: Picasa

Feb 2009 Meeting Topic: Planning your Summer Vacation

Dec 2008 Meeting Topic: Member’s Favorite Links

Nov 2008 Meeting Topic: Hotrodding on Ebay

Sept 2008 Meeting Topic: Shareware Gems

  • Creating, collecting, and organizing information: OmniOutliner
  • Great painting software: ArtRage2
  • Save web pages as graphics without tiling or multiple pages: Paparazzi
  • Password manager for security and convenience: 1Password
  • Capture, sync and find your files on multiple devices: Evernote

May 2008 Meeting Topic: Reunion

  • Reunion received the highest rating for genealogy software in MacWorld, MacAddict, and Mac Home Journal magazines. Reunion also received a MacWorld Editor's Choice award for 2007.

Early 2008 Meeting Topic: Fusion by VMWare

  • Fusion is a new entry in the MAC application arena. It provides you with the ability to run a virtual machine having another operating system (Windows XP, Vista, Unix, etc.) within the MAC OS.

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