This-a-way graphics by Wolfman Gass

SpringFest 2010 on May lst brought over 120 people through the doors at Kapiolani Community College for a full day of workshops, door prizes and a swapmeet!  Congratulations to iPad grand-prize winner and new HMAUS member Darrel Baluscang!

iPad Winner Darryl Baluscang and President Wolfman Gass photo courtesy of Kate Paine

Mae Kishimoto, another HMAUS member, won the MacSpeech Dictate software with a Bluetooth headset courtesy of Andy Taylor and Nuance Software.  Other lucky winners walked away with $20 Best Buy gift-cards, camera bags and other prizes.

Alex and Zac Ozawa

Mahalo to  Ryan Ozawa for the photos; more fun pics at his Hawaii Flickr stream.

The iPad was definitely the big star of the day;  but there were a couple of little ones too! (see photo)

Presentations began with  Jerome Koehler, Apple Solutions consultant from Best Buy Aiea, who highlighted the iPad and the new MacBooks.

Four Professional Photographers of Hawaii members shared how they capture their unique images: Dwight Okumoto, of Studio 3 presented panoramas; Claude Ayakawa of Claude’s Photos, portraiture; Jennifer Chung, dance, and Terry Takaki of TMC & Associates, lenses for close up and landscape.  Mick Isde of Lighthaus Camera gave a preview of SLRs with HDR video. HI Communications demoed the super fast Clear 4G system and provided everyone with Wi-Fi all day.

Ohia Auditorium presentations

There was a short HMAUS annual meeting to confirm the election of six Board directors – Rick “Wolfman” Gass, Ronald Albu, Kimo Sutton, plus new Board members Burt Lum, Claudia Nygard and Christian Ganne.

And there was more!  Chris Gagiulo of KCC’s New Media Arts program explained the development of  websites, from concept through wireframing using Adobe Creative Suite.  Brian Kerber of AppleMagic.net offered Mac 101; Ross Rasmussen, iApps that come free with everyone’s Mac; Greg Kamei took folks deeper into iTunes;  Ron Albu & Lois Cain showed how to have fun with Skype and iChat. There was something for everyone.

Enjoying the day - Jerome Koehler, Apple Consultant, flanked by HMAUS members Mark McMahon and Ron Albu; Linda Hijirida with her iPhone; Burt Lum and Terrence Young in his cool Bytemarks Cafe t-shirt!

People agreed the sessions could have been longer, but that was OK because one of the purposes of Springfest is to get folks interested in learning more by attending other events held throughout the year. A schedule is always available at the HMAUS Signal website http://www.hmaus.org. Lecture presentations are free, hands-on workshops are very inexpensive.  HMAUS members get priority seating and discounts.

Want to support the programs and take advantage of the learning opportunities?  Join HMAUS for just $24 per year. It’s a steal!

And if you missed Springfest, keep your eyes and ears open, and be ready for Mactoberfest, the next big HMAUS event, coming in the Fall.

Top to bottom row: Swapmeeters Dwight Okumoto and Studio 3, Tony Ing of HI Communications, Eugene Villaluz, Lyle Awakuni and Candace Fernander,

]]> http://www.hmaus.org/2010/05/springfest-came-went-and-was-great/feed/ 0 http://www.hmaus.org/2010/05/handy-iphone-apps-for-staying-connected/ http://www.hmaus.org/2010/05/handy-iphone-apps-for-staying-connected/#comments Fri, 07 May 2010 20:00:02 +0000 markmcmahon http://www.hmaus.org/?p=4397 If you are like me, you’ve got to live in a mixed OS environment, at home is Mac and at work is Windows. And, you’ve got an iPhone or iPad which works great with Mac, but doesn’t play quite so nice in a corporate environment. Here are some great apps for your iPhone that will help you bridge the gap between those worlds.

DropBox: FREE — sync files — with this iPhone app, you have access to your files on the go. And since the storage is cloud-based, and dropbox works on both Mac/Win you can have your files synced effortlessly. See my previous Dropbox article about the software versions and how to download and install on both platforms with FREE 2GB + 250MB of storage.

Evernote: FREE — sync notes — while the iPhone app isn’t as robust as some other Note applications, it will sync with their incredibly handy Mac and Windows application. So, if you’ve made notes or clipped screenshots at home for your big presentation at work, you can edit it on the way with the app, and then have it synced and ready on your work PC. See my previous Evernote articles for more details.

LastPass: FREE (requires $12/year subscription) — sync passwords — there you are visiting a favorite website at home or on your iPhone, but you can’t remember what password you used. Not any more with LastPass. LastPass works as a browser add-on that will store and sync your login information. Plus, anywhere you travel, you can log into the LastPass.com site to find those passwords. Find out more about LastPass with my previous article on it.

Skype: FREE — cheap talk — sure iChat is great on the Mac, but it’s limited to the Mac. Skype works on both platforms and even on your iPhone. With Skype, if you subscribe to one of their unlimited talk plans (US = $3, Japan = $6), you can not only talk all you want at home, at work, and on your phone. (NOTE: Skype currently requires you to use WiFi to make calls on your iPhone. To get around this limitation, you can use the FREE Fring application, which allows you to make Skype Out calls over the 3G network.)

Pandora: FREE — cheap music — if you love music, this is one app you need to have. Set up “stations” of your favorite music and let Pandora stream that music to you via this iPhone app. Pandora.com works great in Firefox and Safari also, so you can listen to those stations at work or home too.

Toodledo: ($3) — sync to-do’s — with this iPhone app you can edit/add/delete your To-dos. Toodledo’s website offers links to sync your account with both Mac and Windows, so those changes you made will be reflected wherever you go.

Photo apps: — see your photos — there are several good apps to show and upload your photos to a photo site, including Shutterfly (FREE), Flickr (FREE), Eye-fi (FREE), and Picasafoto ($.99, for Picasa) . If you take a lot of photos and want to see them on the road, these apps will help you stay connected to those images.

Yelp: FREE — great tips — Yelp’s iPhone app can help you find local businesses quickly. The “bookmark” feature is really great for keeping your favorite places’ phone numbers handy. So, you can order your favorite Thai dish in advance for quick pickup. User reviews can also give you tips what to order or avoid.

MAC ONLY:

AirMouse: ($2) — control your Mac with your iPhone. This app will work with your local WiFi network to become a trackpad to control your Mac wirelessly. Much more robust than Apple’s free Remote app, and cheaper than a Magic Mouse.

Prowl: ($3) — get PUSH notification on your iPhone from any Growl messages on your Mac. If you have Growl installed to display notifications on your Mac, Prowl allows you to send those notifications to your iPhone. You can be notified of things like disk errors, completed downloads, or whatever you want.

Well, I hope that’s helped you with some cool apps for you iPhone. If you have children and don’t mind them holding your $300 device, then check out my other articles on iPhone Apps for Toddlers.

HMAUS sponsored three diverse and interesting Hawaii Geek Week offerings about new ways of doing things. The presentations took place at ING Direct Cafe on three evenings.  They focused on capitalizing on the reach and power of today’s Internet and computers . . . without programming expertise.  That means they’ll work for a lot of us!

October 20, 2009  ”TechHui” by Daniel Leuck was about a science, technology and media arts social network that has taken on a life of its own.
October 21, 2009 “Do you really need a webmaster?” by Mark Johnson answered the question, “no you don’t!”
October 22, 2009 “Mac OS vs Windows 7″ was a fun side-by-side look at the two big operating systems presented by Rolf Nordahl and Jeff Litvinoff.

October 21, 2009
Daniel Leuck,  CEO of Ikazyo, the creator and principal sponsor of TechHui demonstrated how such a diverse community can work as a source of information, job leads, marketing and social and intellectual interchange.  He showed the underlying Ning structure and the multiple options for interactivity and information management Ning and various plugins can offer.  At this point, group formation and content at TechHui are user driven, an essential characteristic of a dynamic social community.  Join the new HMAUS group at TechHui that Rico Moreno created for us.  Mahalo to Rico, Daniel and Mika for helping us create our group and spreading the word about Hawaii Geek Week and Mactoberfest!  http://www.techhui.com/group/hmaus

October 21, 2009
Mark Johnson, CEO of logicspin.com and menumill.com presented “Do you REALLY need a webmaster?” He demonstrated a variety of online services that allow you to build a website using templates that  you then customize your content, without knowledge of coding.  Mark reports his product, Menumill.com offers clean code, user friendliness, customization and affordability. Regardless of the provider you choose, he stressed the importance of putting effort into first thinking through your site’s purpose, the nature of its content, and the type of user experience you want to present.   Then it’s much easier to create a site that’s coherent, easily navigable and focused.

October 22, 2009
Rolf Nordahl of Macmouse Club and Jeff Litvinoff of Personal Touch Computers put Snow Leopard and Windows 7 on two side-by-side monitors for a features comparison. Both offer simple navigation, speed and  claim stability. The Live Task Bar in Windows 7 is nice.  You can list favorite files for each open application and view them as jump menu popups from the task bar. A touch screen feature is possible with the right hardware and application. Some of the advanced Premium features will only work on new computers but there are several options to choose from. Rolf says “the war is over” the systems are becoming closer in functionality and usability.  Is it time to load Windows 7 on your Intel Mac?  A resounding “maybe!”

We thank our presenters for sharing with us and broadening our perspectives about what’s possible.  Mahalo to the members and new friends who joined us and the staff of the Waikiki ING Direct Cafe for again hosting us so graciously!

Imagine getting updates from your favorite web sites delivered directly into your mail inbox. No more having to visit those sites in your browser to find interesting articles. With RSS those “feeds” of information come to you.  You “subscribe” to a feed and then get article summaries to view, almost like email messages. You decide if you want to visit that site or not.  All you need is an RSS “reader” (and for Mac OS X users, one is already built in.)

So by now you may be asking, “what is RSS?” Most commonly it stands for “Really Simple Syndication” and is a special format of XML (Extensible Markup Language) in which all the data is wrapped in tags. These tags allow the data to be understood very easily, which has allowed RSS to flourish worldwide.

For website owners who write content on their site, publishing RSS feeds can be just another path or channel to their site.  And now, many CMS (Content Management Systems) and blog software have RSS feed publishing built in, so there’s nothing extra you as the site owner have to do.  WordPress sites, for example, are some of the easiest ways to have RSS feeds running for all “posts,” or “news updates.”

Sound interesting? Let’s see how easy it is to subscribe to the HMAUS feed in my three step process.

Step 1: Find the feed. On sites with RSS feeds there are usually two places to look; 1) the address bar of your browser, or 2) a button mentioning RSS/Subscribe. Here’s an example with the HMAUS web site showing both of them:

Once you find one of them, simply click on the that link and copy the feed URL (control-c).

Step 2: Add it to Mail. Once you have the feed URL, go to Apple’s Mail program and click File and “Add RSS Feed.”

If you did step 1 correctly and are connected to the Internet, Mail should find the feed and populate it for you. Whenever there is an update, you’ll be notified, just like you are with email.

Step 3: That’s it! You’re done. Let the best of the web come to you!

Now, what if you don’t like Mail or want fancier features? Well, there are plenty of other RSS readers. Desktop apps include free open-source Vienna, free NetNewsWire that syncs with Google Reader, and Times, a beautiful, newspaper-like reader.  For online readers, you can use Google Reader or MyYahoo to name just two.

What other feeds are out there? Most major sites now have RSS feeds available; CNN, NYTimes, MacWorld, and Honolulu Advertiser. Remember to check your favorite sites for feed icons, and you can also subscribe to the HMAUS Twitter feed for real-time updates.

That’s really just scratching the surface of RSS.  If you’d like to know more, or have some great feed suggestions, let us know.

Mark your calendars and plan to spend the day with us on Saturday May 23rd. From 9 – 4pm we are having our semi-annual Fest at the Japanese-American Institute of Management Science, JAIMS 6660 Hawaii Kai Drive. Camera and computer Swapmeet by the Professional Photographers of Hawaii and HMAUS from 9:00 til 3:30.

Place your lunch orders HERE -- Order yours NOW to make sure you’ll get one. Limited quantities except for pre-orders.

Get the a copy of the event flyer HERE.

Free, interesting talks all day long! Neat Door Prizes!   An all star cast!!

9:00 Opening and coffee. Swapmeet opens!
9:30 Cool Apple Stuff

Joe Zaret, Apple Solutions Consultant will update you what’s new, what’s coming in the Apple product line. Then he’ll demo iLife 09 and iWork 09, just out with cool features that will blow you away. Kelvin Kakugawa, Software Developer, will demo why you really do want an iPhone and tell you about how he developed his iPhone app – now available in the iTunes Store!

10:30 Break and Lucky number

10:45 Zen-tested Tech Time Machine

Hang on tight with local tech personality Peter Kay as he takes you through a whirlwind tour that combines great tech tips and time management how-to’s wrapped around Zen-like wisdom. You’ll walk away with techniques you can put to use immediately as well as ideas that can help make a really positive impact on your life. If you’ve never seen Peter “live” don’t miss this event! http;//yourcomputerminute.com

11:45 Lucky number and pickup Lunch (bento for purchase when you arrive, buy early)

12 Andy Bumatai makes Funny Business

Comedian? TV producer and host? Video Blogger? Entrepeneur? All of the above! And where did the Mac come in? Everywhere! How he did it, how you too can not only enjoy your computer, but also turn your passion into a business. http://andybumatai.com

12:45 Lucky number and break.

Concurrent Afternoon Breakouts

Session I 1:00 – 2 pm (3 concurrent topics)

Mac 101 Ross Rasmussen This is a class for newbies, switchers and for people who just haven’t had time to really get to know their Mac. We will look around the desktop, explore at the Dock, get an understanding of the System Preferences, learn some shortcuts and, most importantly, try to answer your questions. This is a good class for people who are switching to Macintosh and want to understand their machine a little better. This session is very low key and relaxed.

Cooking fabulous photographs from RAW to rockin’ with Lightroom!
Learn how to cook up wonderful images with Adobe Lightroom with Eugene Villaluz. Adobe Lightroom is a powerful suite of tools which give photographers the ability to process digital images; manage, catalog and archive files; and prepare finished images for presentation. This presentation will use actual shooting projects in a step-by-step reveal showing how to achieve visual impact with photographs.

SNL – Social Networks and Livefeeds – Burt Lum and Ryan Ozawa of Bytemarks Cafe present the why and how services like Facebook, Twitter work and how to protect your privacy.
Alltop <http://alltop.com> is an online magazine rack with more than 580 topics from A to Z. For many, understanding RSS and building feed readers can be confusing and discouraging. MyAlltop <http://my.alltop.com> allows users to customize their own page with a few simple steps. Alltop’s Chief Evangelist, L.P. “Neenz” Faleafine will demonstrate setting up and organizing your own MyAlltop.

Session II 2:15 – 3:15

iPhoto 09 Explore the new features of iPhoto with Ross Rasmussen and learn how to import and organize your photos, edit them, and share them with friends and family. Attendees are encouraged to bring their cameras and learn how to get the photos from the camera into the computer. Bring your laptop, if you have it!

Website or Blog? Yes you can! – Ever thought you could have a website or a blog up in a half hour, for free, without knowing any programming or buying any software? Well yes you can! Kelvin Kakugawa will show you how to create a website in minutes using a web 2.0 application, what blogs are and why you care, and how to create a good looking free WordPress site. So what do you need webdesigners and programmers for? He’ll show you what else is possible!

BYOC – More than a Point and Shoot Terry Takaki and other PPH photographers. Are you using your pocket camera on Auto all the time? Wonder what those other modes and controls are? Want to now how to set up a shot? Then you’ll want to come to this session. Important – BYOC – Bring Your Own Camera. It’s going to be handson.

3:15 – 4 pm Final Lucky Number Drawings, ICE CREAM and sharing in the cafeteria

Sponsors

Hawaii Macintosh and Apple User’s Society http://www.hmaus.org

Professional Photographers of Hawaii  http://www.pphawaii.org

TAPA Communications  http://www.tapa.com

Peachpit Press  http://www.peachpit.com and

O’Reilly Books  http://oreilly.com

If you have a web site now with some product and no e-commerce functionality, PayPal can add it in, very quickly and easily without the need for a new site. And, if you later decide to move into a full e-commerce website, PayPal can still be used as a payment option.

Paypal allows you to offer web visitors to pay for products on your web site with options other than mailing you a check or money order. You can accept credit cards transactions.

How much does it cost? PayPal is FREE to sign up and then only takes a percentage of each transaction. There are no recurring monthly fees like there are for standard merchant accounts (like with your bank or Authorize.net). However, the percentage of the fee on transactions is a little higher than with standard merchant accounts.

How do I get paid? PayPal takes a percentage off the transaction and then puts the rest into your PayPal account. From there, you can either request a check (for a fee), or have it deposited into your bank account.

How do I create an account? If you visit Paypal, make sure you specify you want a BUSINESS or PREMIER account. Those allows you the options to easily sell online. If you are doing business as (DBA) a different name and want the bills in that name, specify BUSINESS while registering. Otherwise you can just use your own name with the PREMIER option.

During registration, PayPal will ask for some information, including your bank account information. PayPal will deposit 2 transactions into your bank account (say .64 and .42 cents) so that you can verify with them you received it. You must wait until those transactions clear your bank (typically a week) before you can start selling.

OK, I’m verified, now what? Log into your account and you will see some Merchant Tools. You can easily create a button for any item on your site that will include the price and details. Copy the HTML code into your site. A button will now be there. When a visitor clicks that button it takes them to Paypal to do the check out and complete the transaction. You will receive an email notification that someone has paid from PayPal, and the visitor receives a confirmation of their purchase automatically from PayPal. Plus, you can even set up “shopping cart” functionality with PayPal, allowing your visitor to add multiple products and amounts into their cart before they checkout.
And, as your business grows, PayPal can grow with you; many sites offer PayPal AND standard merchant Credit Card options on their websites.

Sounds easy, are there any drawbacks? PayPal, while one of the most used methods of online payment, isn’t without its problems. However, for an easy solution to adding e-commerce to your website without monthly fees, PayPal is hard to beat. Visit PayPal’s site to read their FAQs to see if PayPal might be right for your business.
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Check out my other posts: E-Commerce With PayPal and E-Commerce Resources for some additional information.

The workshop’s mini lesson “Introduction to WordPress Plugins” was followed by Kelvin’s clinic on “Pimping your Website.” He introduced Firebug, a very Firefox plugin for web development and design.

This month’s Web Weavers Workshop was held in the conference room at Hawaii Self Storage on Waialae Avenue. Next month’s workshop will be held on Saturday, May 9, from 1 PM to 4 PM and will also be at Hawaii Self Storage.

The titles include: iSale, Picturesque, SousChef, World of Goo, PhoneView, LittleSnapper, Acorn, Kinemac, WireTap Studio, plus BoinxTV, The Hit List, and Expresso (unlocked once $10,000 from sales is donated to charity), and Big Bang Board Games (for the first 25,000 buyers).

MacHeist says they are “donating 25% of each bundle purchase to a partnering charity of the customer’s choice”.

Read the post here.