SVMUG -- September 17, 2007

Introduction -- Charles Gousha

New People

-- been on the mailing list, came for the first time, mostly a Unix-Solaris person
-- just moved from SF, long time BMUG member

News and Events

1. iPod event -- revamped the entire product line.
The original iPod is now the iPod classic, with 160 GB.
The iPod Touch is essentially an iPhone
without a phone, Bluetooth, speaker or microphone.
It is basically an iPod with a WiFi web browser.
The iPod nano is now a video player.

2. iPhone price is dropped by $200 -- original purchasers have been given an in-store credit of $100.00. The 8 GB iPhone is now $400.00. Note: purchasers in the last two weeks have price protection, that will refund the $200 difference.

3. The iPhone hacks are neither supported nor opposed by Apple, although you are warned that normal software upgrades may break third party hacks.

4. New store in Los Gatos -- rather low key event.

5. Microsoft dropped the price of the Zune by $50. No one seems to care.

6. ISO has rejected the Microsoft ooxml standard.

7. EU has rejected the Microsoft appeal on the anti-trust conviction.

8. John Rubenstein and Fred Anderson have joined Palm. Perhaps as "the adults" to watch the kids in the company.

9. A third party enhancement of the Mac Book Pro adds a gold and silver case and diamonds.

10. Mac World Expo registrations are now open. The show is January 15-18 at the Moscone Center, as usual. The discount codes have not been sent out yet.

11. New iLife 08 is available. Improvements include a reworked iMovie, iDVD. iMovie 06 is still available.

12. NBC Universal seems to be an off-and-on again provider for TV videos on the ITS. The staring match continues.

13. NBC Universal is also participating in a "free" (advertising supported) music store, as an alternative to ITS. Supposably the music from this store will NOT play on an iPod. The staring match continues. The new store is "Spiral Frog"

14. Ringtones are available for purchase, provided you have already purchased the full song.

Presentation -- Google Searching Tips and Secrets -- Nancy Blackman

Nancy Blackman -- wrote books on mathematical software before joining Google.

She started work on the official guide to Google, which evolved to the GoogleGuide website.

Hint 1: practice using Google to learn how to use Google.

1. The Google toolbar provides a highlight feature, to show the keywords that a search result item possesses. However, you do not have to actually do a search first! On any page, enter keywords in the Google box, but DO NOT search. Instead, use the toolbar highlight option to reveal those keywords in the current page, rather than a page from a search result item.

2. The Google search allows the logical "or" in the search terms. Use either the literal "or" or the symbol || (double pipe).

3. Note: the toolbar works under Firefox or Mozilla, but not under Safari.

4. Autofill helps fill out forms.

5. The page rank meter shows what Google "thinks" about the page, in the Google index.

6. Driving directions are available from the Google Maps utility. Furthermore, a traffic indication can be added. Dragging a route will select alternates. You can also specify intermediate destinations.

7. Street view shows real photos from the street level of points on the map.

8. use 'rphone' to search the residence phone book. For example, type in the search box "rphone: Nancy Blackman CA".

9. Type in a phone number to perform a reverse phone directory lookup.

10. Type in an arithmetical expression to get a quick calculation.

11. Check out Google Labs for beta features, such as programming source code search.

12. When a single word is searched, the statistics bar will have a "definition" link to obtain the definition of the word.

13. Also use "define: someWord" to get many definitions from the web for a given word.

14. The online personal shareable calendar is useful to exchange information with family, friends, significant other. Also provide reminders of birthdays, and holidays.

Break

Roger Smith talks about storage options -- what is best?
Roger Smith is a member of the Apple Consultants Network.
Artegenix Computer Services

"Storage Options for Small Business"

Roger's first law: whatever you got, it will not be enough this time next year.

Second law: Murphy was an optimist. Disk drives break whenever possible, and at the most inconvenient moment.

Historical view
floppies
Zip disks
...

Hard disks are fifty years old, but still going strong.
Up to terabytes,
but still mechanical and still break.
So Flash in the future?

Price to performance still favors hard drives.

Plan for the failures.
Develop and test backup.
Develop and test recovery.

Storage needs are growing
audio
video, including HD
images, including RAW
regulatory requirements

current storage options:

bigger faster internal drives,
1 TB, 3 GB/sec, but limited by physical space,
IDE= old, slow
SCSI= old complex
SATA= current state of art;

bigger faster external drives,
SAS= serial SCSI, distances short
ESATA= distances short, 1.5 - 3.0 Gb/second
USB= reality slow, not reliable,
Firewire= more reliable
ethernet= needs a dedicated network, slow at 200-300 Mb/sec

networked storage,
RAID
NAS = network attached storage
typically play and plug
SAN = storage area network
dedicated resources for managing and delivering data

RAID 0 trade reliability for speed
RAID 1 mirror image is reliable, but inefficient
RAID 5 best of both worlds

SAN
pricey, especially at higher capacities.
Apple XSAN
FibreJet
MetaSAM

Connections
Fibre Channel - fast expensive
...

For archives, clone drives, store offsite.

Tape is ancient history -- unreliable, expensive.

Q&A

1. How do I setup a home page for a blog?

-- use Blogspot, most social networking sites.
-- iWeb on dot Mac.

2. How to speed up Netscape or Safari?

-- for the most part, these are already optimized.

3. Mark/Space encounters a "file is locked" error when syncing.

-- this situation is unfamiliar to us. We are not sure.

4. What is a recommended all-in-one printer under $200, with built-in fax?

-- HP 6110

5. How does Numbers compared to Excel?

-- the iWork applications are graphically minded,
but heavy handed formulas, macros, etc. are in Excel.

6. I have a duplicated iPhoto library. How do I manage these?

-- Launch iPhoto with the option key, to select each Library.
-- save the duplicate library, as a backup.

7. How can I save a video from the web?

-- What format is the video? Quicktime, WMP, RealVideo, or Flash?

-- RealVideo is heavily protected. However there are some third
party applications that can capture from the screen. We suggest
SnapzProX.

8. When allocating a backup drive, I get the error "waiting for volume".

-- We are not sure about this.

Wrap-up