Hi All Here are some brief notes from tonight's WAMUG meeting. <http://www.wamug.org.au> I missed the start of it, so missed the Q&A part. My apologies for that. But the rest was interesting! :o)
Peter Hinchliffe showed off BookLightening, as well as the Take Control series of pdf manuals. It is a program that allows you to take pdfs and convert them into a form such that you can print them out to make small reasonable books, which you can then print out. ---quote from Versiontracker-- "BookLightning is a Mac OS X 10.3 native utility for imposing PDF files into booklets, either for further processing or to print directly on a duplex or non-duplex printer. Operation couldn't be simpler: just drop a PDF file on the BookLightning icon, and it will create a new PDF with the pages of the original file arranged on sheets that are twice the size, two up and arranged so that they will form a booklet of the original size when folded in the middle. BookLightning does its job very quickly, generating the new PDF file typically takes less than a second." --end quote--- <http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/19405> Or <http://www.metaobject.com/Products.html#BookLightning> Tidbits ebooks.:- <http://www.tidbits.com/takecontrol/default.html> Peter then demoed Applescript. It has been around for a long time, and parts of the OS even require it. Applescript really exists to tell other programs what to do. A typical example of this, is taking a bunch of records in Filemaker Pro then into Excel and make a graph of them. You can use an Applescript what records and figures you want, move them to excel, and tell Excel how to make a graph out of this info. So you can make Applescripts as simple or as complex as you want to. You can write your own Applications and then put an "interface" on it and get it working. You want to have Developer Tools installed, so as to make things a little easier. You can create the Applesript menu, via Applications/Applescript. There is Install Script menu and Remove Script menu. Once installed you'll have a lot of little demo scripts ready for you to use. AddressBook, Mail scripts, Navigation Scripts, Print scripts, Importing scripts, and more. You can then open these into Applescript editor and see how they work. The best way to see these are to play around with them, and certinaly the books help. You find it's very useful and very helpful for a lot of things. There are also some very good books on Applescripting. <http://www.apple.com/applescript/> Big Bang Chess This is a shareware Application, which you can download and play either Solo (against the computer), or you can play via a Network, either locally or via the Internet. You can even email people so they know you're online. In the preferences you can access the Address Book, use iTunes songs, across iChat/Rendezvous and email. You can also choose different pieces so it makes it easier to see. You can then play against people and away you go. We had a few games running against each other which allowed us to demo the game. <http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/23398> iPod mini and new iPods I showed off the new iPod mini and the new iPod's and some of the accessories available for them. Thanks to AppleCentre Joondalup for the loan of the 2 iPods. <http://www.macworx.com.au> The iPod mini comes in 5 colours (Blue, Gold, Green, Pink and Silver) and sells for $399. <http://www.apple.com.au/ipodmini/> The iPod comes in 2 sizes, 20GB for $499 and 40GB for $649. <http://www.apple.com.au/ipod/> Some of the accessories available for it include cases, FM Transmitters (iTrip, iTripMini, Belkin AutoTuner, iPodFreq and Monster iCarPlayFM) ranging in price from $59 through to $199. I also showed off the iConnect USB Wireless adapter for those machines that want to access a wireless network, but can't take a wireless card for some reason or another. If it has a USB port and runs Mac OSX then this is a great solution, and well priced at $79. Product available from MacWizardry for more info. <http://www.macwizardry.com.au> We then showed some trailers. The first a "little take off" at America. As Matt explained when it first went up the server it was on was doing something like 5GB of traffic a day! (I think that's right, I'm sure Matt will correct me if I'm wrong.) :o) You can view it at <http://images.shockwave.com/afassets/flash/this_land.swf> The second a trailer from Apple's Quicktime Trailer site. Team America: World Police <http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/team_america/> Matt showed off some game trailers, including Doom3 coming to Mac soon. To close the meeting we gave away some prices including Verbatim Vinyl CD's, iMation Blank DVD-R 3Pack and Kelly Slater Pro Surfer game. (Thanks to MacWizardry for the prize donations.) Tea and Coffee enjoyed afterwards, then we all wondered off home. (Some of us later than others,..oops) :o) Thanks again all for a good meeting and everyone coming along. If you would like to see something included in the meeting please let us know and we will look at putting it in. Thanks again. Enjoy! Kind Regards Daniel Kerr
