GreenvilleMUG

You may have already heard the news but I’m a big advocate of encouraging people to always backup their data.  Insurance or warentees can recover hardware, software can be reinstalled but you own unique data can not be recovered or replaced as easily.  Sure, they are recovery services but they are very expensive.  I know a lot of people have been waiting to buy and install Leopard because they were waiting on a good backup/disk clone option.

Today is the day. SuperDuper! 2.5 has just been released and is Leopard ready. If you aren’t backing up on a regular basis or don’t have a clone I urge you to get this software and a backup drive.  We will be covering backup options in a future meeting.

The 11-13-07 Meeting featured fast stuff.  Patrick Greer started off the presentation with a demonstration and introduction to Quicksilver. According to Wikipedia Quicksilver is A computer utility software program for Mac OS X. It allows users to use the keyboard to rapidly perform tasks such as launching applications, manipulating files and data, running scripts or sending e-mail. Patrick mentioned that he will use Quicksilver to launch applications he uses very frequently and save new or seldom used by needed item for the dock. Patrick also shared how you can do action on files a lot more quickly than using a mouse.  Patrick then shared a Google Talk video featuring the developer of Quicksilver talking about his application.  After viewing a part of the presentation Patrick fielded questions from those in attendance.  Patrick also mentioned two MacBreak videos that told more about Quicksilver and how to use it.  MacBreak Episode 12 and Episode 17.  Quicksilver can be downloaded from http://www.blacktree.com.

After the Quicksilver presentation Bobby Morrison gave a demonstration of Leopard showing the new user interface with Coverflow, Quicklook and then he told us about his 5 years with Apple as an employee. Bobby then took questions from those attending.

I’ve been following the online career of Internet entrepreneur, Chris Pirillo almost since I got on the Internet over 10 years ago. Chris was originally known for his e-mail marketing business, later he transitioned and enhanced his business with blogging and I have to admit he was one of the first people I heard about blogging from and for that I am thankful. Chris’s latest venture seems to be broadcasting online via live.pirillo.com and providing choice segments where he answers various tech question in a video podcast form and on YouTube.

When the hype around the iPhone was at an all time high Chris choose to go against the tide and share 20 reasons why he wasn’t going to get an iPhone and I have to admit he did have some good points although for someone who professes to love the latest technology he seemed to quite closed minded and I wondered if he was just trying to take the negative slant to get hits but he did seem quite passionate.

Needless to say I was quite amused when his wife presented him with an iPhone for his birthday and his reaction was both annoying and funny at the same time. Somewhat reluctantly activated the phone, had some minor activation issues but it was soon rectified. In the past week he has been using it more and more to do interesting things including running an IRC client displaying the chat room* associated with his live web site.

This morning Chris posted a new article on his blog entitled, 20 Reasons I’m happy with the iPhone.  It was a pleasure to read.  Not because I love Apple products as well as my own iPhone but rather it’s refreshing to set two articles from different slants and opinions still revealing balance in what they say.  It’s also fascinating to see how the user experience of the iPhone has changed his mind on many of the original issues he had with it.

For the record Chris is not a Windows fan or Apple fan or even a Linux fan but tries to explore all technologies and uses the ones he thinks are the best for the job.  His primary computer is a Window machine but he does have several Macs as well and has been considering a full switch except for  using windows in a virtualized environment for some time now.

*Notice - some of the links may contain objectionable language in the chat room running inside some of his video and on some comments people have posted on Youtube but I felt it was worth it to put the article in greatest context.

Patrick Greer, our webmaster, (yes, I’m actually writing this post as well) has posted his report of buying, activating and the user experience with the iPhone on his companies web site at,

http://www.spinningsilkmultimedia.com/yes-we-have-an-iphone/

Do you live in Greenville and/or a member of GreenvilleMUG? If so please feel free to leave a comment with any of your stories for the benefit of potential  purchasers and new owners.

I’m a big user of Adobe software, in particular Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Acrobat but surprisingly none of those programs are in my dock. My generally strategy is to place things in my dock I either don’t use on a frequent basis but rather want to remind myself to use or something I have to use almost daily or always run as a service. As you may know both Finder and Dashboard run by default in OSX 10.4 Tiger. I also have another piece of software called Quicksilver always running in the background. On the basic level Quicksilver is “launcher” when allows me to launch certain programs quicker with key strokes. I use this to quickly launch mail, Adobe products, text editors, my news readers, etc.

After Quicksilver I run a terminal “replacement” called iTerm. iTerm allows you to enter the unix command line environment and I’m busy teaching myself quite a few of those command line skills. Two big advantages of iTerm is tabs (which I think is coming in Leopard) and also a full-screen view for that “old school” look and immersive environment.

After iTerm I keep the backup program, SuperDuper! as a reminder to always backup. Following SuperDuper! is two programs that block out distractions, One called Nocture by the same developer as Quicksilver and another program called, Noise which allows me to drown out audio distractions with white or pink noise. I’ve tried this with head phone and it does drown out background noise like other people talking and other office noises.

I’m working on teaching myself the programming language, Python and I have a neat little utility in my dock called, Learn Python which combines a html tutorial window and a command line window. Next is a very small app called Brainstorm Lite which helps me brainstorm ideas for my business and other projects. I then have a link to the OSX Image Capture utility so I can control which program is activated when I put in my digital photo memory card.

lately I have been experimenting with “micro-blogging” as a sort of “personal PR” or practicing new release writing for my business. Two of the most popular micro blogging applications are Jaiku and Twitter. I have two applications that communicate with those service respectively are Juhu and Twitterrific. BTW, I my user name is linkerjpatrick in both Twitter and Jaiku if you are interesting in what I am doing from time to time. I’m also into regular blogging big time and the desktop application I use to post to all my blogs is called Ecto. Ecto not only organizes all my blog posts in one place but also keeps copies of them offline. Finally I have an item that has to stay in my dock called AppDelete. If I want to go beyond just dragging an application to my trash can I can use AppDelete which also delete other directories associated with deleted programs which contain settings.

My philosophy is to use Quicksilver to launch applications I use on a very frequent basis and to use the dock to remind myself to use on a less frequent basis. Your way may be different but this is what works for me.