Muskoka Mac User Group

I’m testing out a new tool – [WordPressDash](http://www.apple.com/downloads/dashboard/blogs_forums/wordpressdash.html).
It’s a nifty concept – add the widget to your Dashboard, and you’ve got a quick easy way to make entries on the MMUG website with no muss, fuss or worry.
I’ll demo it at the next meeting, but in the meantime I suggest everybody tries it out – maybe I can get a few posts up here that I didn’t write

If you are – [this article](http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2006/02/22/iwork.html?page=1) from [O'Reilly's Mac Dev Centre](http://www.macdevcenter.com) is worth a look. Nice little summary.
Actually – this sounds like a good topic for a meeting presentation. Who’s using iWork? What do you think? and why?

There have been a couple of Mac security scares in the press lately – If you haven’t been keeping track and want details – take a look [here](http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/69862) and [here](http://www.ambrosiasw.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=102379).
There have been many, many discussions prompted by these all over the internet, and if you want to work your way through them feel free, but let me give you the short version.
Camp A is ‘Ha Ha – your Mac is as bad as my Windows machine and you are all going to be sorry now!’
Camp B is a bunch of geeky types debating if they are worms, trojans or what and kind of absent-mindedly saying ‘Nothing new here really – nobody would fall for this stuff anyway’.
Neither of these groups is providing the information that most Mac users need.
I’m willing to discuss the issue at length if somebody wants to talk to me about it, but here’s the ’short and sweet’ version of what you need to know (and do).

1 – Start Safari – go to Preferences, click on the General option.
Turn off “Open safe files after downloading”.
It’s a convienience feature that just isn’t safe.
Please note if you use [Firefox](http://www.mozilla.com) or [Camino](http://www.caminobrowser.org) there isn’t an issue there – they don’t have this problem option.

2 – Quoting [Daring Fireball](http://daringfireball.net/2006/02/safari_shell_script_exploit)

It boils down to this: you can’t safely double-click files from untrusted sources, and you never could.
This is no different today on Mac OS X 10.4 than it was a decade ago on Mac OS 8 and 9.

[This is a great article](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/14/AR2006021401342_pf.html) from the [Washington Post](http://www.washingtonpost.com) detailing how ‘bot nets’ work, and why. At one time, viruses, trojan horses etc. might have been the stereotypical high school pranks – but not anymore. It’s all about money. Worth a read…

[DivX Labs has released a beta of their new movie player](http://labs.divx.com/LatestMacPlayer). I tried it quickly – seems like a nice option to Quick Time player with a couple of neat effects – and it plays DivX format movies as well (obviously). On the other hand, it’s still no help for those pesky Windows wmv files.

As you may know – Apple’s latest laptop is Intel based. As soon as it was announced, lots of techie types started dreaming of a Powerbook they could run Linux, OSX and Windows on. But it’s not going to be easy for a while anyway – the motherboard is a new type that Windows XP doesn’t support (no BIOS). As a result, [a group of them have started a contest](http://windowsxp.onmac.net/The%20Contest.html). Figure out how to make it work and win a cool $11K (and counting). Interesting how the user community is the one pushing this stuff rather than the companies themselves.

I just tripped over a feature in Tiger that somebody else out there might appreciate like I do.
Software update from the commandline has been overhauled. Now all the features you want are available from the commandline (via ssh say) as well as from the gui. Check out the ‘help’ message (and yes – that’s new too – hopefully Apple is starting to document their command line programs a bit better)


usage: softwareupdate [ ...]

-h | --help Print this help


[Another great tip](http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/macosxhints/2006/02/qtplayernopro/index.php?lsrc=mwrss) from [MacWorld](http://www.macworld.com). There’s an easy way to get rid of that annoying PRO label they put in Quick Time Player if you haven’t upgraded.

Quit QuickTime Player and then control-click on its icon in the Finder. Choose Show Package Contents from the contextual menu, and then open the Contents/Resources folder. In the Resources folder, you’ll find a file named ProMenuItem.tif. To disable the icon in the menus, simply rename this file.

[Here's a great little tip](http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/macosxhints/2006/02/mailphish/index.php?lsrc=mwrss) from [MacWorld](http://www.macworld.com) discussing how to use a built in feature of Mail to help prevent fraud.

A trick often employed by email fraudsters is to create a link that says on thing but goes somewhere else. For example – [www.canada.com](www.muskokamug.org) < <-- that link is actually to muskokamug.org, not canada.com...
Just hovering your mouse over a link in Mail will show you where the computer will send you, making it easy to compare to where
it says it's going to go.

Our February meeting is fast approaching.
When: Tuesday, February 7th, 7:30 to 9 ish.
Where: macs@work’s digital life centre
What: Digitizing your vinyl collection–Keynote presentation by Bill Rathbun
Sharing photos via personal web-page –by Nicolle Balders
Preview of iLife ‘O6 and iWeb in particular–by Meg Jordan
Anything else that comes up.
N.B. Please remember to bring a folding chair.