/index.php/weblog/index/ The Ford Macintosh Users Group en bduck@mac.com 2008-08-02T14:46:01-05:00 http://www.fordmug.com/index.php/fordmug/oreilly_news_for_user_group_members_august_2008/ Get 35% off from O’Reilly, No Starch, Paraglyph, PC Publishing, Pragmatic Bookshelf, Rocky Nook, SitePoint, or YoungJin books you purchase directly from O’Reilly. Just use code “DSUG” when ordering online or by phone 800-998-9938. Free ground shipping on orders of $29.95 or more. Also, view these links for upcoming deals/events: Brian Duck 2008-08-02T14:46:01-05:00 http://www.fordmug.com/index.php/fordmug/save_50_on_all_take_control_ebooks/ This just in! TidBITS is offering User Groups 50% of their ’Take Control’ and ‘MacWorld SuperGuide‘ eBooks through next Tuesday, April 29th. If you haven’t seen this wonderful electronic reference book series, now is the time to check it out! eMail from Adam & Tonya Engst follows. (They are the TidBITS & Take Control publishers) Brian Duck 2008-04-22T11:29:00-05:00 http://www.fordmug.com/index.php/fordmug/flexcamp_cleveland/ Today is Flex Camp Cleveland, an educational seminar targeted at someone starting out in Flex. If you’ve had some experience doing software development and are interested in building RIA’s, the entire Flex Camp series are really useful to attend. The lineup of speakers is pretty impressive, including Ben Forta and Adam Lehman from Adobe, Kris Schultz and Michael Krotscheck from Resource Interactive, Doug Pierce and Curtis Gayheart from WonderLab and Scott Andrews from DimpleDough. Michael Krotscheck was kind enough to publish his presentation and source files on his website, practicalflash.com. Brian Duck 2008-04-07T14:25:00-05:00 http://www.fordmug.com/index.php/fordmug/irizer_minirizer_i_get_it_now_that_ive_tried_it/ by Brian K. Duck, Product Review Editor iRizer is a laptop stand, literally. And, now that it’s on my lap, I get it! Matias Corporation has a number of innovative products, the iRizer and MiniRizer are definitely worth a good look. Brian Duck 2008-03-13T00:42:00-05:00 http://www.fordmug.com/index.php/fordmug/photoshop_cs3/ By Brian K. Duck, Product Review Editor Introduction For years, creative professionals such as designers, photographers, and prepress specialists have relied on Adobe Photoshop software to help turn imagination into powerful imagery. But Photoshop has also become the digital imaging standard for a wide array of other professionalsincluding people working with motion graphics for film and television; 2D and 3D design imagery in manufacturing, architecture, and engineering; and medical and scientific professionals dealing with specialized images. To best meet the diverse needs of all these professionals and more, Adobe now presents a choice of two versions of the software Photoshop CS3, and Photoshop CS3 Extended. Both new versions help increase your productivity with streamlined workflows for every imaging task, getting you from start to finish faster. New palette management maximizes your workspace, and additional preset capabilities let you store even more of your favorite settings for reuse. The unrivaled editing power of Photoshop is enhanced with new live, re- editable filters; improved color-correction features including better brightness, contrast, and monochrome conversion; cloning and healing preview overlays; and improved perspective-based editing. And breakthrough compositing stems from new features that automatically align and blend multiple image layers, automated selection tools, and more. Photoshop CS3 Extended builds on top of the digital imaging standard, by starting with all of the new features and enhancements in Photoshop CS3, and adding specialized features and tools designed especially for professionals in film and television, manufacturing, architecture and engineering, and medicine and science.  New 3D and motion support includes time-based cloning and healing on new video layers; 3D model visualization and texture editing; and export of 3D models from 2D images. And comprehensive image analysis comes from new 2D and 3D measurement tools, and support for DICOM images and MATLAB processing routines. Brian Duck 2008-02-29T02:34:00-05:00 http://www.fordmug.com/index.php/fordmug/oreilly_news_for_user_group_members_february_2008/ Get 35% off from O’Reilly, No Starch, Paraglyph, PC Publishing, Pragmatic Bookshelf, Rocky Nook, SitePoint, or YoungJin books you purchase directly from O’Reilly. Just use code “DSUG” when ordering online or by phone 800-998-9938. Free ground shipping on orders of $29.95 or more. Also, view these links for upcoming events: Brian Duck 2008-02-26T05:49:01-05:00 http://www.fordmug.com/index.php/fordmug/weibetechs_drive_erazor/ by Brian K. Duck, Product Review Editor What is Drive eRazer? WiebeTech’s newest hardware solution completely erases all data from a hard drive quickly and easily. Stand-alone operation. No computer required! Faster than software. Why use hardware? Drive eRazer is faster than software programs, and Drive eRazer doesn’t tie up a computer. What’s more, it’s far easier. Simply connect it to a drive and flip a switch. No computer needed. How fast is it? Faster than software. A conservative estimate is 35MB/s. A 250GB drive would be fully erased in under two hours.* Drive eRazer is faster than software programs, and Drive eRazer doesn’t tie up a computer. What’s more, it’s far easier. Simply connect it to a drive and flip a switch. No computer needed. Brian Duck 2008-02-21T16:06:00-05:00 http://www.fordmug.com/index.php/fordmug/get_the_last_word_on_mac_os_x_terminology_iby_i/ by Adam Engst, Publisher of TidBITS and the ‘Take Control’ series of eBooks. We Mac users sling technical jargon around every day, but if you’ve ever felt uncertain about what a term actually means, help is here in “Take Control: The Mac OS X Lexicon.” The ebook is a mad romp through over 500 Macintosh- and Internet-related terms. You’ll learn how to figure out if your optical drive can write to a double-layer DVD, why 404 and 501 are interesting numbers, how to work with the three main types of dashes that you can type on a Mac, and much more. We’re not talking about some dry old dictionary here - these definitions are loaded with useful tips, practical advice, humor, and empathy. If you enjoy the serendipity of discovering useful tips in unexpected places, you’ll love this ebook. Order Here: Take Control: The Mac OS X Lexicon News, Operating Systems Brian Duck 2007-12-14T00:09:00-05:00 http://www.fordmug.com/index.php/fordmug/5_take_control_ebooks_launch_you_into_leopard_save_30/ Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard is finally here, and we can now share with you the fruits of an incredible amount of work over the last few months: five of our most popular ebooks completely updated for Leopard, and they’re all available right now, led by Joe Kissell’s essential ”Take Control of Upgrading to Leopard.” Once you’ve installed, our other ebooks will help you customize all of Leopard’s new features, share files much more elegantly than in the past, and manage your fonts with Leopard’s new font activation capabilities. News, Operating Systems Brian Duck 2007-12-02T00:21:01-05:00 http://www.fordmug.com/index.php/fordmug/install_and_run_windows_on_an_intel_based_mac_with_ease/ by Adam Engst, Publisher of TidBITS and the ‘Take Control’ series of eBooks. If you want to install Windows on your Intel-based Mac soon, or if you’ve installed Windows but aren’t happy with how it’s working, you can find up-to-date help in the 148-page “Take Control of Running Windows on a Mac,” by Joe Kissell. The ebook is completely up-to-date and loaded with all the details you need to run Windows on a Mac successfully with Apple’s Boot Camp 1.3 beta, Parallels Desktop 3.0, the release candidate of VMware Fusion, and the free public beta of VirtualBox. It also now covers both Windows XP and Vista and includes real-world advice about installing Windows, dealing with tricky peripherals, sharing files between Windows and Mac OS X, backing up a Windows installation, avoiding Windows malware, and more. Still not sure? Check out the free 29-page sample to see what we mean! News, Operating Systems Brian Duck 2007-11-20T00:17:00-05:00