OS X LIST REVIEWS

So, you wanna run a mail-list? There are a number of ways to go about this, from checking out yahoo's email-groups to purchasing list-software for your Mac (LetterRIP ).

Then there's another option, check with your ISP and perhaps they have installed an email list application on their computers. If that's the case, chances are likely that it will be either 'Listserv', 'Majordomo', 'ListProc' or even 'SmartList'. In the event that you do decide to take advantage of an email-list software offering from your ISP such as these, then hopefully your ISP will provide you with adequate instructions on how to get it going. If this is not the case, then you'll be in for a treat by reading Alan Schwartz's 1998 book, Managing Mailing Lists. Within its pages are a comprehensive set of guides that take you from the set-up to the actual operation of the lists. Included in it are options for 'building' your own email list software if you have a machine that is permanently connected to the internet and want to use its facilities instead of your ISP's computers.

Schwartz does a good job of explaining the differences and similarities in these four mailing-list software packages. Included are examples, plenty of commentary from other mailing-list managers that are useful in becoming an email-list manager. The book is divided into four primary sections, an overview, then individual chapters of maintaining an email list, administering it, and then a command-reference. By reading through the appropriate section for your mail-list software, you will get a good idea of what is needed and what is, and isn't possible.

If there is a criticism to be made about the book, it is that there are no 'advanced' topics that are now more pertinent than ever such as filtering email against certain criteria (i.e. html, excess quoting, excessive-length posts). In that case, finding out more information is left as an excercise to the reader and Google/Yahoo/Turbo10 search engines.

Nonetheless, even with that concern noted, this is a good, well written book, with lots of examples, lots of information within its 260 pages. As I am very much a 'paper-learner', preferring to learn from a physical book than to learn from a computer screen, this will be added to my library of useful computer books.

Dieder

LetterRIP

Managing Mailing Lists

Yahoo Groups

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Being a relative newbie to the Mac compared to so many folks, I felt in the dark about all the little things that make a Macintosh what it is...the best personal computer bar none. Knowing so little about it compared to so many other long time users, I was quite anxious to learn all I could as fast as I could. Part of my difficulty includes about twelve years using another platform which so many others blindly use. This gave me enough knowhow to provide support to many other people.  Since I'm not one to leave well enough alone, I am always pushing my computer to the max and getting more out of it than many other people might expect.

Mac OS X Panther Hacks, by Rael Dornfest and James Duncan Davidson and published by O'Reilly, provided me with more of an inside look and helped to give me what I had on the other platform...the ability to do things more efficiently and to do things that other users might not know about. I wanted to get into the "guts" of the Mac and Mac OS X Panther Hacks is helping me to achieve that goal.

Whether you are a newcomer to the Macintosh or a long time user, after getting into this Hacks book, you are bound to find something of use. There are one hundred hacks nicely numbered and arranged so you can read one at a time and know which one it was or read it by sections. The sections are arranged nicely into chapters according to the types and uses.  There are nine chapters including a wide range of topics:

1. GUI
2. Scripting
3. Web, Chat, and Mail
4. Multimedia
5. Gadgets and Hardware
6. Networking and Network Apps
7. Servers
8. Files and Backup
9. System Administration

And a really helpful index.

Once cracking this book open, it didn't take me long to have a "eureka!" experience. "I didn't know I could do that!" I heard myself say to myself. I learned something new that I bet no one else knows....or do they? 

My favorite hack so far is using the services menu under the application menu. It's an amazing thing and has been used more often than anything else I read in the book. The next thing I'm going to do is use more scripting and attach those scripts to my file folders. Fortunately, the authors provide lots of great examples. Whew...I don't "do" Apple scripting.....yet. I will after reading this book.

The authors don't exclude the use of other applications in "hacking" the OS but they sure do provide a lot of helpful ways to use them. My very favorite hack in that way was their suggestion to "Clutter Your Desktop with Music." In that hack, #42, they suggest using a little iTunes add on called Clutter. Ohh...I don't want to give all of it away. I want everyone to have a copy of this book. You just have to use this little app. It's a great helper if you love your iTunes.

Some of these chapters will require return visits for me as I managed to find out that I knew very little about some aspects of  "hacking" Panther. The book now resides on my desktop and will for the foreseeable future.

No one will lose by getting Mac OS X Panther Hacks and will surely be surprised at what they don't know when they get through this wonderful volume. Be sure to check one out for yourself very soon. You won't regret it.

Mary
Spider Woman Web Design

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Disk Warrior 3 first hand report

by: Judi Sohn

My Disk Warrior 3 upgrade CD arrived today! Since I know many folks are waiting for their copy, I thought I'd post a report:

To install, you just drag the application icon to your drive like most other well-behaved OS X applications. When you launch the application from disk you can set the preference to monitor your drive(s) and alert you to trouble. At this point, the interface is similar to previous versions except you have the option for "Directory" or "Hardware" to monitor your drive(s). Like the previous version, you can't rebuild the directory on your boot disk. I tried it out first on an external disk and the rebuild took about 3 minutes with no errors. Then I bit the bullet and restarted from the CD to rebuild the directory on my startup disk. G4/450, 1 GB RAM, 27 GB disk. Rebooting from the CD took a bit, about twice as long as it did to reboot into OS 9 in previous versions. This is not really a problem because the time is more than made up later. I should also say that like the OS X install CDs, the Finder does not launch when booting from the CD. You are brought right into the Disk Warrior application.

It found a problem in the wrapper and urged repair, which I agreed. From there, it only took about 20 minutes to rebuild the directory. This used to take at least 45-60 minutes with DW 2 on the same drive.

The best (IMO) feature is the last. When you want to preview the new directory, instead of being thrown to the Finder (of which there is none) you get a file navigation window to do a side-by-side comparison. There is a check box where you can navigate both sides at the same time so it's super simple to see if there are areas where the two do not match up.

While I have been typing this I've been running DW 3 on my iBook G3/800's 30 GB drive. Strangely, when I went to examine the details of the report my iBook reboot! I have no idea why. I definitely didn't touch anything to cause that and when I hit the same button "Details" on the G4 I got a text window showing which files had problems. I'm curious if it's a bug. I'll report more as I find it.

Judi Sohn
http://www.momathome.com
judi@momathome.com
http://www.momathome.com/viewfromhome (weblog)

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Mariner Write Company: Mariner Software Boxed Edition: $79.95 Download Edition: $69.95

For the last couple of weeks or more, I’ve had the privilege of playing with a piece of software that I would like to see take the place of MS Word. Yeah...do tell, people. Can there even BE such a thing? Quite possibly...and it comes in the form of a sleek word processing program from Mariner Software...MarinerWrite. It is available in either a box or as a download for a price that is well below that of any Microsoft Product and it runs slicker than goose grease on my Mac. Imagine that! No more “suddenly quit” or “unexpected errors”. I’ve not seen any errors like it while running Mariner Write.

Some of you might ask....”But does it open a Word document?” My answer, without hesitation, “Does a bear poop in the woods?” Of course it does. It doesn’t save in Word format however, but it does save as RTF-Word, which opens very nicely in Word with no visible loss of formatting.

What else about Mariner Write is there to tell? Well, it takes less disk space, uses less of your resources, supports services (under application menu), directly saves as PDF, it’s stable, has mail merge capabilities, available in OS X and 9.

A number of the features that you might use in Word, you won’t find in Mariner Write but the only thing that can help you to find out which is which, good, bad, and missing is to go to the developer’s web site and download a demo version which is good for 30 days. It won’t hurt you much either when you decide to buy it. Thanks Mariner!!

-- Mary, Spider Woman Web Design