Jim got his start with Macs when he was hired as a commercial appraiser for a Downers Grove Township Assessor's Office in 1987. After the 3rd day, he became the computer department! Jim has always used his Macs for business and pleasure and has been self employed since 1998. Jim grew up in LaGrange Highlands, IL. His father was an architect and home builder taught Jim everything from sweeping up basements to drafting. He got a start in electronics when his parents got him a crystal radio kit when he was around 7. He continued learning electronics by building many HeathKit kits - CB radios, test equipment, and even a color TV. He won an award for a presentation on RADAR at the Illinois Institute of Technology around 1956. Jim's Mom & Dad moved to Downers Grove, IL (he went with) where he finished high school. He was pretty popular and ran for Student Council President - lost by 1 vote. Jim got formal electronic training in the US Air Force where he was an Instrumentation Technician on a Thor missile launch crew based at Vandenberg AFB in California and Johnston Island in the Pacific (717 miles WSW of Hawaii). The payload was a nuclear warhead used as an anti-satellite project named Program 437 and was Top Secret until news of its existence was in the LA Times.   Jim drove a semi-truck for a while to see the USA and got into the heavy duty towing business where he became pretty good... he was the 1984 Illinois State Driving Champion and in 1985 the National Tow Truck Driving Champion. He does enjoy driving! Jim's Mac life has taken him to many AppleFest and MacWorld conferences. He had a number of friends from Apple's User Group Connection. His work continued through two Assessor's Offices, but due to an election was forced to look for another position. He worked with the Planet Group (5th employee) doing consulting work at Sears and Duff & Phelps. Jim moved into a nice startup company - hired as a Network Administrator, but soon became the head of the computer department. After the company was bought out by a company in Connecticut, he decided family was more important than moving - especially since his father was loosing his leg due to diabetes. After the passing of his father in 2002, he looked after his mother. In 2006, he decided it would be best to move his mother to The Villages for a number of reasons. The second thing Jim did when he got to The Villages was to join The Villages MUG! Jim tries to give back some of the stuff he has learned from others. Jim does some Macintosh consulting work and enjoys creating video Life Stories for people, some are on his website: LifeIncluded.com.

iCloud: Mail server information: ""

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Re: "Flash installer" trojans ...

From MacFixIt (here):

Again, this malware is very rare and will not affect most Macs out there, but if you suspect one of your Macs has been infected then you can do a rudimentary check on your system by running the following two commands in the Terminal (copy and paste them):

defaults read /Applications/Safari.app/Contents/Info.plist LSEnvironment

defaults read /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/Info.plist LSEnvironment

These commands will read the property list within the applications and check to see if they have been modified to launch other applications when opened. In the output for these commands, if you see text that includes "DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES" followed by a path that points to a specific file, then your system has been infected. If you do not see this text output and instead see "The domain/default pair...does not exist," then your system has not been infected.

 

Security: "defaults read /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/Info.plist LSEnvironment"

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Duplicate Calendar Entries after...: Apple Support Communities: ""

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Apple Applications

Video and text tutorials are available on Apple's website and iTunes:

In your web browser

These are streaming videos and are playable on any browser, any computer, and any smartphone.

• Apple Find Out How - MacBasics
• Apple Find Out How - Photos
• Apple Find Out How - Movies
• Apple Find Out How - Web
• Apple Find Out How - Music
• Apple Find Out How - iWork
• Apple Find Out How - MobileMe

Podcasts on iTunes

These are downloaded to iTunes to be viewed at any time. They can also be sync'd to your iOS device. You can subscribe to the current list and automatically download future podcasts or you can view individually. These links will go to a website where you can click View in iTunes to subscribe to or view podcasts.

• Find Out How - Mac Basics Podcasts
• Find Out How - iPhoto 09 Podcasts
• Find Out How - iMovie 09 Podcasts
• Find Out How - iWork 09 Podcasts
• More Find Out How Podcasts

Help is available in most Apple application's Help menu! Apple Support Help Site Apple Support Discussions Forum Apple Seminars

Apple & Other Applications

ScreenCastsOnline (some free, some subscription - $45 per year) - nearly 300 high quality videos (30-45+ minutes each) available on line or as PodCasts on iTunes in a variety of resolutions. MacMost (free) - over 500 short videos on a wide variety of applications MacWorld Video (PodCasts in iTunes) - free MacWorld Podcasts (PodCasts in iTunes) - free Other Software How-To (Podcasts in iTunes) - many free Google, Google, Google! Search for your problem! You are not the first to have it:

• "Apple Mail not sending"
• "iPhoto not importing"
• "TheVillages.net email settings"

Solutions

I've seen a few screens which had very little contrast and have not been able to find a solution... until today! After a Google search, I found a discussion on the Apple Support forum with this solution: Apple - Support - Discussions - Contrast ...: ""

On another forum I read that to adjust contrast you press ctrl + alt + cmd and then either "," or "." - this certainly seems to alter my display's contrast! If not, then what am I changing??

Free Stuff

Looking for Keyboard shortcuts?

• dashkards — dashboard cheat sheets for your favorite mac apps

100 Incredibly Useful & Free Mac Apps Other Sources The Villages MUG Main Website - Tips, Glossary, Newsletters, Help... The Villages MUG Help Center - 12 months of meeting videos and links to online help The Villages MUG Google Group - Between meeting help by other members Mac Users Drop-in (MUD) - People helping People Apple Classroom SIG - New for residents - Hands On classes for a variety of subjects - all sessions will be video recorded for everyone to view.

101 really useful Mac tips

"Late on Friday, Macworld's Jason Snell discovered that the new 4.1 version of virtualization tool VMware Fusion had a special talent. Up until 4.1, Fusion would refuse to install non-server versions of Snow Leopard and Leopard into a virtual machine, since Apple's licensing for those OS builds did not include a virtualization option." Fusion 4.1 support for pre-Lion, non-server OS X is a mistake, says VMware | TUAW - The Unofficial Apple Weblog: ""

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Here's a picture of Jim's installation (click the picture to enlarge): [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="553" caption="Snow Leopard in Lion!"][/caption]

We found an interesting article about hard drive issues and repair utilities.

MacTips » Blog Archive » On Drive Repair Utilities

Member Don Partilo pointed out this Video Podcast on the TVMUG Google Group. This video has a good explanation of how files are written to a hard drive and why we do not need to Defragment our drives.

MacMost Now 373: Do You Need to Defrag Your Mac?

Did you ever run Activity Monitor only to wonder what all those processes are doing? Well, here you go: Description of Mac OS X processes : by triviaware: "" If you want to know specifically what is running on your Mac, click on the link:  Check processes running on your Mac You will need to run Terminal...

Keep your contacts and calendars up to date in multiple places for free Check out this article on MacWorld.com