CherryMUG

Tomorrow night may be the last meeting for CherryMUG. Rich Hoadley has done an admirable job of running CherryMUG for the last few years, but he has decided that he doesn’t want to continue running the group.

We are going to gather at CityMac at 6:30, Tuesday, January 19, 2010 to decide what the future of CherryMUG shall be. If nobody wants to continue running the group, then it will be disbanded. We may continue the web site and forum. That depends upon what all of you want. Is it worth continuing? Tomorrow is your chance to be heard.

Thank you for all of your years running the group Rich.

Rick

You can talk about it on our Forum.

So, Apple’s latest version of Mac OS X, Snow Leopard, is out today. You going to run to your closest Apple store and buy it? Not so fast, Sparky. Have you done your homework?

Snow Leopard is loaded with nice improvements, mostly speed improvements. The price is great $29 for the upgrade from Leopard. If you don’t have an Intel based Macintosh, then you are out of luck. Snow Leopard only runs on Intel based Macs. First, have you checked to make certain that the applications that are important to you will run after you upgrade? I found a site with a pretty good list of applications and their compatibility status: http://snowleopard.wikidot.com/. If your application isn’t on that list, then try contacting the developer of that software. How about hardware? It would also be a good idea to make certain that anything that you have attached to your computer also works. Once, again go to the manufacturer’s web site and check it out. You also may want to take a look at MacFixIt to see what people are reporting there.

BACKUP YOUR COMPUTER! Sorry about the shouting. I can’t stress this one enough. Backups are critical. I don’t care how expensive your hard drive is, or what operating system you are running, hard drives can fail. If you have never had a hard drive fail on you, then you have been extremely lucky. It isn’t a question of if hard drives will fail, but when. The longer you work with computers, the more you will come to realize that it can happen. Hard drives have gotten so inexpensive today, there really is no excuse.

Once you have checked to make certain the applications that you need will work, and you have done a backup of your computer, you can upgrade. I plan to upgrade, but not the first weekend.

Oh, and did I say backup your computer?

I Dig It is an iPhone/iPod Touch application by InMotion Software, LLC. The concept is very simple. You are the operator of Farmer Lewis’ digging machine. He converted an old bulldozer into a high tech digging machine to collect valuable items from under his farm. “I Dig It” is not a hard game to learn. Game play is simple and the controls are very easy to figure out.

The game can be challenging at times. There are various modes that I found to be fun variations. In all of the modes you have to manage fuel, temperature, and damage while searching for diggins. You bring your diggins back to the farm house to sell them. You then use that money to buy fuel, and upgrade your digger.

I’m currently addicted to this game. It is perfect for when I’m waiting for my daughter at her music lesson, or even a short break during my lunch hour. The artwork is very nice. It is as good as anything that I’ve seen on the iPhone so far. And the game is challenging enough get my attention for a while, but not so hard that it is frustrating. I’m not a hard core video gamer. I like video games, but they are certainly not a main focus in my life. This game is a good game for me. You hard core gamers would probably get bored with it pretty quick. It is a good game for the rest of us.

The full version, v1.2 at the time of this writing, costs $2.99. The free version, I Dig It (Lite), gives you a nice little preview of the game. I think it is worth the $3 dollars to get the full version.

Developer: InMotion Software, LLC

Requirements: Compatible with iPhone and iPod Touch, OS 2.0 or later.

Did you turn off your iPhone? If you didn’t, is it dead yet? I didn’t think so.

There is a lot of buzz on the Internet about the demonstration by Charlie Miller and Collin Mulliner of the iPhone virus at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas. First, they didn’t report that the virus is out there in the wild. They demonstrated it at the conference. OK, I’m sure those two guys are much smarter than me. I’m not a hacker. I don’t create viruses. I’m not even a programmer. I’m just a guy who loves working on his computer, and now on the iPhone too.

Your iPhone, Palm, Blackberry, etc… they are computers. Just as that machine sitting on your desk is a computer. Since the late 1960s or early 1970s, there have been computer viruses. You know what? As long as there are computers, there will be computer viruses. It doesn’t matter. The really smart people who make the computer systems will do their best to make their systems virus proof, and there will always be other really smart people who do their best to find vulnerabilities. It is a cycle that will keep going, and going, and going.

Now, there is even a report about how an attacker can conduct a “Man-in-the-Middle” attack against Web sites with Extended Validation (EV) Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates.

And, yet another about a vulnerability in Mac OS X.

The only computer that is truly safe from a virus is off, and unplugged. That computer doesn’t do you much good. So for now, I’m not shutting down my iPhone. I’m not shutting down my computer. If I get virus, then so be it.

I exchanged some emails with Adam Engst. The awesome editor of TidBITS has given us permission to post their TidBITS Announcements Newsletter on our Forum. That means that every week there will be new announcements there with links to all of the great articles on TidBITS.

Everyone who has been on our CherryMUG email list knows that we have been following TidBITS for years. Now you will be able to find those links right here in our CherryMUG Forum. Just one more reason to get in on the fun.

So, what are you waiting for? Come join us!

So CherryMUG has been around since 1995. There is a really great site known as Internet Archive: Wayback Machine, (old people, like me, may remember Mr. Peabody and his Wayback Machine). The Internet Archive: Wayback Machine is this huge archive of web sites. It can be a lot of fun to search through some of your favorite sites.

I wanted to show you what the Apple Computer web site looked like back when CherryMUG started, but not all of the archives are complete. The farthest back I was able to get a complete Apple web page was April, 1997.

Apple Computer in 1997

Check out the “Emate 300.” Those things were ahead of their time.

Apple was very different in 1997. They were going through some very hard times. There was a lot of speculation that they wouldn’t survive. You don’t hear that kind of talk today.

CherryMUG was very different then too. We were going pretty strong at that time. Mac users needed something to rally around. They wanted to know that they weren’t alone in there love of these crazy machines. Now, CherryMUG is struggling. Enthusiasm for the user group certainly isn’t what it used to be. That is why I changed the web site. I’m trying to spark some interest again in the group.

At the moment, membership is free. Maybe, that will change in the future, that all depends on what the group ends up needing. Right now, there is plenty of cash in the CMUG reserves to support this web site and the occasional meeting at the library.

Now we have this great CherryMUG Forum for you to share. Come join the forum. Let’s see what we can do to take CherryMUG into the future.

More changes. There is no need to register here on the main site. You can post your comments. I just need to approve your first comment.

You do still need to register on the CherryMUG Forum though. I hope you all come over there and check out the forum.

So, why did we change the CherryMUG web site? That is simple. It needed it. The site had been pretty stagnant for a long time. I’ll be honest, my interest in it had waned. I recently started my own blog on WordPress, Rick’s Vault. We also have started a blog on the Corbin Design web site. Both of which have been fun for me to setup. I’m finding that it has been recharging my drive to get things going.

I’m not ready to step back into the role of President of CherryMUG, but I am hoping that this site and the new forum that will be here very soon, will spark some new life into the group.

So, get registered on the site so that you can make some comments. Let’s see if we can get the energy back up for CherryMUG.

Welcome to the new CherryMUG. We decided that is was time to refresh the site. There will be more new information here very soon. It is going to have lots of information here, and I’m in the process of setting up a forum.

For now, please register with this site so that you can make comments on the posts that we will be putting up here.

If you have questions, send me an email.
Rick Stringer
rick@cherrymug.com

Or better yet, post a comment on this site.