At our May meeting we had a special presentation that I hope will be an annual event. 15 people were recognized for their years of volunteer service to MacTechnics and to the community with the President's Volunteer Service Award. Details of this award, including our 2007 recipients, will be in the next newsletter.
I would also like to extend a personal "thank you" to Dean Martelle for helping me to make the transition to NeoOffice. The more I use this freeware program, the more I like it. Our members had ample time to ask a lot of questions about NeoOffice and, as a result, felt more confident about using the program. If you missed this meeting, read the article about Neooffice in our May newsletter or visit http://www.neooffice.org/. Did I mention that NeoOffice is free?

First of all, let me offer my thanks to Jim Monkiewicz for doing an outstanding job as President last year. It's nice to know that Jim still has a place on the Board of Directors for the upcoming year. He is now our webmaster and will help me make my transition a little smoother.

At the April meeting our members voted and approved new officers for the 2007-2008 term. We still have one position open - Vice President of Communications. This position is rather easy this year, since we have topics planned until January, 2008. The Vice President of Communications is responsible for organizing each main meeting (topics, introduce guest speakers, main meeting setup, and main meeting announcement via our website & email.) If you would like more information about this position or would like to volunteer, please feel free to contact me. My email address is in our monthly newsletters.

Also in April, we continued with our topic of "Memories on the Mac." Google's Picasa Web Albums (http://www.picasaweb.google.com) and Lasting Impressions' Memory Mixer (http://www.memorymixer.com) were demonstrated as well as a way to personalize your email, website and albums by using My Live Signature (http://mylivesignature.com/).

Next month, we'll go back to the basics and talk about an office suite called NeoOffice. It's a free product designed for Macintosh users. You'll see how this product compares to Microsoft Office or AppleWorks or other office suites you might be using.

Hope to see you on May 19th!
-JoAnn Olsen

If you missed our February meeting, you missed an opportunity to see an outstanding example of User Groups at their best. If you couldn't make it and didn't realize what the Demo Fair was all about, let me give you a brief definition.

The Demo Fair consists of several, fast paced and generally focused demonstrations on a "neat thing" or product that members have discovered recently while using their Macintosh. The Demo's are short (15 minutes), fast paced, entertaining and fun with lots of information and laughs along the way.

The group's thanks go out to each of our demo presenters...

Rob Hafer - iPod Shuffle Syncing
Jim Monkiewicz - Crossover Mac
Dave Funk - iPod/Keynote Presentation
Steve Johgart - Xupport
Nicholas dePaul - Google SketchUp
Michael Smith - Toast 8
Gordan Jurasek - wikipedia
Erven Thoma - Pipe Organs -- Go Live/Safari/GarageBand
Fred Seitz - Safari Extender & CopyPaste

The Demo Fair has been an annual tradition for three years. But, I heard many comments from members and guests alike that "...we should have these more than once/per year". If you feel that way, let JoAnn Olsen know ;-)

Some sad news since our last meeting... Unfortunately, as some of you may be aware, CompUSA has decided to close all but one store in Michigan (Lansing). I've had a chance to speak to Joe Alcodray, from Apple, and he is awaiting his next assignment and operations for the rest of the CompUSA team are "winding down".

I'd like to extend the thanks and appreciation of the MacTechnics group to Joe and all the fine CompUSA people that we've had the pleasure to come in contact with over the years. The Ann Arbor CompUSA organization and people have been very supportive and generous to MacTechnics and we want to wish them all well in their future endeavors. If you get an opportunity, try to stop by in the near future and say hi to Joe and other people from CompUSA that we've worked with over the years.

Joe also mentioned that since CompUSA is in the process of reducing their inventories there are some excellent bargains if you can get there while they last.

See you all at the March 17th meeting!

Jim

In case you missed my special hat at our January meeting I thought I'd send along a picture. It was a fun way to start off 2007, especially with a Hot January MacTechnics meeting and Hot Apple announcements at MacWorld.

First, the January meeting... Rob Hafer did a fantastic job of presenting a terrific application called Delicious Library. For those who were not there, Delicious Library provides to ability to store and record your entire book, video, CD or game collection using an iSight camera or digital video camera. The really neat thing is that it searches on the web for all the information on an item based on a scan of the bar code. It also give you the ability to submit items to Amazon for sale... A painless way to have a garage sale without a garage Rob did such an impressive demo, I went right home and ordered a copy for myself. So... Rob... have you ever thought about a job in Sales

The other thing that has ignited the Apple world for 2007 is the announcements at MacWorld in January. Steve Jobs, with his typical style, managed to draw attention from the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (1 week long; 100,000 attendees; most of the major electronics and software giants) to a two hour presentation on a stage in San Francisco.

Apple Computer became Apple Inc... iTV became Apple TV... and Steve set the cell phone industry on its ear with the iPhone!!! If you haven't seen Apple TV or the iPhone check out the Apple site for details.

We originally heard about iTV at last Fall's Showtime event. Fast forward to 2007 and Apple TV becomes a reality, bringing Apple technology to the living room. It includes a 40GB hard drive and wireless streaming of video from any Mac on your home network... AND 720p HDTV of movies purchased thru the iTunes Store. But of course that was the minor announcement of the day.

But, the iPhone was the star of the show! Mix together an iPod music play, Pod with video, iPhoto, iCal, Address Book, Dashboard and Mac "Mini-Mini"... The result... The iPhone. It's not available until June, but the impact was felt while it was being announced with Apple stock jumping $10/share. Is Apple on a roll, or what!

So if January is any indication, 2007 will be quite a year for MacTechnics and Apple =-)

Hope to see you all at Demo Fair III on February 17th!

Jim