</head> <body> <h2>wednesday 28 march 2007</h2> <pre> Dear All - As always, a warm welcome to new readers of this newsletter, going out to well over 400 people now around the globe - most of you are clients - thank you. the Mac Doc has an assistant! I am delighted to announce that Penny de Quincey has agreed to come and help me run the office here at Mac Doc Towers. She's been into the office four times and says she'll come again - remarkable! I am so pleased and will be passing over to Penny as much as I can of the administration of the work to her (to start with she is working 4 hours a week). Expect to hear Penny's cheery voice sometimes when you call in. (Of course she's a Mac user - what do you think was the first thing I checked?) The reason for asking Penny to help is that I am now a "victim" of my success - and I am falling behind with the requests for help that have come in. In the last week alone I have been called by 7 new clients from Norwich to Canterbury. The work of keeping up (answering calls, internet research, buying equipment, invoicing, checking, following up enquiries) has led to me working in the middle of the night and at the weekends. Not what I want. Over the next few weeks Penny will be learning how I run the business and will take over whatever she can, and change whatever she needs to. I am hoping that I can focus on *my* work - helping you – and that Penny can focus on running the back-office - the accounting, invoicing, filing, diary management, etc. I'm looking forward to running a more professional office with her help. Apple Remote Desktop As announced last month - I can now provide this service, either through Apple Remote Desktop (ARD) - a full maintenance solution, or through "Copilot" a collaborative screen sharing application. Copilot is slow, but allows me to see your screen and to do simple tasks thereon in a very immediate manner - we can be up and running within 10 minutes. ARD is much more difficult to set up, but much richer in features and able to offer full remote administration . Call/email if interested in being registered for this service (ARD) - I know that a handful of you have expressed an interest in remote administration over the last couple of years. Cheaper Apple purchases for you As announced last month – slightly cheaper equipment from Apple. When you are ready to buy, call Liz Stafford at Apple, and she will arrange for discounts of between 4-10% (depending on what you are buying). Full instructions from the website - http://www.themacdoc.co.uk/applestore.html Web-browsers for the Macintosh As promised last month I thought I'd take a look at web-browsers. Web browsers are programs like Safari, Firefox, Internet Explorer and many others. Their job is to render the html code that comes from web server sites (like bbc.co.uk, or google.com, or themacdoc.co.uk) into intelligible pictures and text on your screen. (To see what you would see if you didn't use a browser, next time you go to a web site ask the browser to "Show source.." or some similar command. That's what is sent to your machine.) Which browser should you use? Entirely up to you, but some are better than others are rendering the full range of .html and .xml code sent to you. I use Safari 95% of the time; Firefox 5% of the time; and Opera and the long-outdated Internet Explorer about 1% each. If you are not using OS X 10.3 or 10.4 then you are restricted to older versions of the browsers, and these will not show all of the facilities and code being sent to you - that is - you will not be able to see or use some parts of some websites. Other browsers of interest are Camino, OmniWeb (liked best in a recent article in MacFormat magazine here in the UK) and Shiira. Have fun, try them out and see which ones you like! MacBook Pro for sale Sold! Adobe Creative Suite 3 Packages For the designers and photographers amongst you: Adobe this week updated Illustrator CS3 and Flash CS3 in conjunction with updates to Dreamweaver CS3, Fireworks CS3, and Contribute CS3 as well as Photoshop CS3, InDesign CS3, and the entire Adobe CS3 family. The company announced that its Photoshop CS3 software is due in April, which is expected to boost Intel-based Mac sales due to pent up demand from professional users. Adobe Illustrator CS3 allows users to create sophisticated artwork for virtually any medium with industry-standard drawing tools, flexible color controls, and professional type controls. The latest release of Adobe Illustrator CS3, now a Universal Binary, offers Live Color, integration with Adobe Flash, improved operating performance, a control panel, and an eraser tool. The update also features new document profiles, a crop area tool, an isolation mode, and Symbols for Flash. As part of its Creative Suite 3 announcement, Adobe announced the new version of its video editing and post-production application suite, Creative Suite 3 Production Premium. It includes both Universal Binary (After Effects CS3 Professional, Photoshop CS3 Extended, Illustrator CS3, Flash CS3 Professional, Device Central CS3, and Bridge CS3) and Intel-only applications (Premiere Pro CS3, Soundbooth CS3, and Encore CS3) as well as two Windows-only applications as well as OnLocation CS3 for direct-to-disk recording and Adobe's Ultra CS3 keying tool. Encore CS3 offers DVD and Blu-ray Disc authoring and SWF export to the Web, while Soundbooth offers audio-editing for film, video, and Adobe Flash software projects. Adobe also announced InDesign CS3 software, the latest version of its professional page layout program. InDesign CS3, available as a stand-alone application or as a component of Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Premium and Standard editions, will be available as a Universal application for both PowerPC and Intel-based Macs. InDesign CS3 offers new features including Multi-file Place, expanded Quick Apply, Advanced Find/Change, and fast frame fitting, eliminate time consuming and repetitive design tasks; new table and cell styles allow users to quickly format an entire table or apply design to a regional area, such as a header or footer. It also delivers standards-based XHTML export to Adobe Dreamweaver CS3, enabling print content to be repurposed for web publishing. Important updates from Apple: OS X 10.4.9 - perhaps the last update before Leopard (OS X 10.5) iTunes 7, QuickTime7, and iPhoto 6 have all been updated. NB: Photos cannot be edited, shown at larger sizes You may experience an issue where certain photos cannot be edited or shown at larger sizes (including full-screen mode) after updating to iPhoto 6.0.6. It appears that most of the problematic photos are those that have been modified with another application -- particularly Photoshop Elements. MacFixIt reader JE writes: "I'm having serious problems after the last iPhoto update, iPhoto 6.0.6. Many photos will not open for editing or, or when the slider is positioned so the index photos are larger, some of them disappear with an empty box with a question mark in the center. [...] All of the file information is present for these photos, they simply will not display in large size, or full screen mode." Photos not displaying at all Meanwhile, some users are reporting that photos are not displaying at all in iPhoto, though they are still extant in the ~/Pictures/iPhoto Library. In some cases, this issue can be resolved by rebuilding the iPhoto Library. This can be accomplished by holding down the Command and Option keys on the keyboard, then launching iPhoto. Keep holding the keys until the "Rebuild Photo Library" window appears. When it does make sure that the first two boxes ("Rebuild the photos' small thumbnails" and "Rebuild all of the photos' thumbnails" [this may take a while]) are checked, then click the "Rebuild" button. Failing the above, you can do a more complete rebuild of the iPhoto library via the following process: 1. Quit iPhoto 2. Navigate to ~/Pictures/ and drag the folder "iPhoto Library" to the Desktop or another safe location 3. Re-launch iPhoto. 4. When prompted to create a new library, do so. 5. Drag the photos from your old "iPhoto Library" folder to the newly created folder by the same name in ~/Pictures/. Reminder: only iPhoto 6.0.5 can be updated Remember that you must be using iPhoto 6.0.5 before applying the iPhoto 6.0.6 update. NeoOffice Planamesa Software and NeoOffice.org released NeoOffice 2.1, the Mac OS X-native version of the OpenOffice.org office suite. The new release is available in Intel and PowerPC versions and adds the latest features from OpenOffice 2.1, open/edit/save of Microsoft Office 2007 (OpenXML) Word documents, execution of VBA macros in Excel documents, support for linear programming extensions for spreadsheets, an improved Mac-like look and feel, Spotlight support, and more. NeoOffice is free for Mac OS X 10.3.9 and up and is a great replacement/alternative to MS Office (over £300 normal price). (http://www.neooffice.org/) for Gmail users: Gmail is currently one of the most attractive mail solutions on the Internet because it is regarded as the most efficient service against spam messages. As you know, Google developed Gmail Notified but what if you could integrate Gmail directly into your Mac desktop? I really think it can be very useful especially if you're a Gmail lover because you can access your inbox directly from the desktop of your Mac. All you need to do is to install Mailplane for Mac OS X 10.4 or later, an application designed by Ruben, a Mac developer. The application provides iPhoto intergration and Growl notification and is currently available as a private beta program. Although the developer of the tool didn’t mention if the application will be offered for free or among a shareware license, Ruben is now looking for beta testers so, if you're interested, you should click on this link. The same publication sustained Mailplane supports resize photos function as well as drag and drop attachments so using the program is quite easy. “An avid Mac developer has unveiled Mailplane for Mac OS X, a new Cocoa shareware application that integrates Gmail into the Mac desktop. Mailplane supports drag-and-drop file attachments, and automatically resizes photos when composing messages. The software features iPhoto integration, as well as Growl notifications,” macnn reported. As you know, Gmail was recently released from a private beta stage because the mail service was available only by invitation since its launch date in April, 2004. Because more and more users are attracted by the mail product, Google is now hard at work to improve the filters of the solution, describing it as the most efficient web-based email service against spam messages. Best wishes to you all, and thanks for being Mac users hugh <p> <p> </pre> </body> </html>