Latest News
January Meeting Cancelled due to Bad Weather
Posted: January 7th, 2010
Updated: January 12th, 2010
The January SEAL meeting was cancelled due to bad weather and the forecast for that evening. We posted a notice here and did our best to contact all our members before the meeting but appologies to anyone who made a journey only to find the meeting was off.
The next SEAL meeting will be held on Friday the 12th of February following our usual schedule.
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Meeting Report: 11th December 2009
Posted: December 14th, 2009
During our Workship session SEAL members discussed (amongst many things) a problem with Mail crashing after setting up Exchange integration (which turned out to be a problem with the calendars synced to iCal) and setting up home pages in Safari.
We had two presentations at this meeting:
John Pugh gave a presentation on the Mac OS X services feature which has been greatly enhanced in Snow Leopard. John demonstrated the built in services and showed us how to build your own services in Automator. More information about services along with a selection of additional services for download are available from
Mac OS X Automation.
Nigel and Robert then showed how screensharing can be used both as a way to access computers (both Macs and other platforms) from afar and as an aid to giving and receiving assistance with computer problems. They demonstrated the screensharing feature of iChat and how screensharing for use on a local network is built into OS X. For further information, CNet have a useful article covering Mac to Mac screensharing tips.
For members with other platforms or those who have friends and family not yet converted to Macs Nigel and Robert showed how you can connect from a Mac to any computer running the free and open source VNC server. They also used LogMeIn.com to connect to a home PC. LogMeIn has a basic free version available (Windows and Mac compatible) along with a more comprehensive subscription product.
Other cross-platform screensharing options mentioned were Skype which provides an iChat-like experience but does not support remote control, Yuuguu which provides chat and full screensharing and Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection which is a good choice for local screensharing if you have a PC with a Professional, Business or Ultimate edition of Windows.
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Meeting Report: 13th November 2009
Posted: November 15th, 2009
 
Following our new meeting format we kicked off with a discussion of this month’s Apple related news which concentrated on the new Magic Mouse which a couple of SEAL members had purchased. Robert demonstrated the Alpha version of Google’s Chrome browser which has recently become available.
This month’s workshop session was very busy. Several members helped Alan organise backup on his eMac with two external hard drives. Nigel assisted Graham with his Mac Classic II which had developed a hard drive problem. Nigel was able to get the hard drive working and retrieve Graham’s data.
Nigel gave this month’s presentation which was an introduction to Mac security. He covered some of the security features built into Mac OS X and discussed whether virus protection is a necessity. The general concensus was that it is not required with the very limited number of threats “in the wild”. However antivirus can be useful if you commonly share files with PC users and want to avoid spreading in infected file, for this Nigel recommended the open source ClamXAV. Apple have a section on their site dedicated to Mac security.
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New Meeting Format
Posted: November 8th, 2009
From the November meeting (to be held on Friday the 13th) we will be trialing a new meeting format with the aim of making meetings more interesting for everyone:
19:45 – 20:15 News – discussion of the latest Apple and Mac news.
20:15 – 21:00 Workshop – An opportunity for members to help each other with any problems they may be having and also to demonstrate any new hardware or software.
21:00 – 22:00 Presentation – A planned presentation on a pre-announced topic. This might be from a SEAL member but we also hope to arrange some guest speakers next year. At the November meeting Nigel will be giving a presentation on keeping your Mac secure.
Times are approximate and this format is not set in stone, let us know what you think of the changes.
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Meeting Report: 9th October 2009
Posted: October 11th, 2009
The hot topic at this months meeting was Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard. Robert demonstrated the new OS running on his Mac mini and showed off some of his favourite new features which included the improved Stacks, showing the date next to the clock in the menu bar and the new features of the WiFi menu. Snow Leopard has many new “hidden” features that you might not notice straight away, Robert recommended Mac Life’s article 100 Snow Leopard Tips, Tricks, and Features as a good list of features to try out.
We also discussed one member’s options with dealing with an eMac with limited hard drive space including how he could make best use of external drives and different methods for getting Album art in iTunes.
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