The Palm Beach Macintosh User Group

Come join us at our next meeting, Wednesday, November 19, at the West Palm Beach municipal library, as we welcome back once again, Dean Hoffmann! Dean's extensive knowledge of computers is exceeded only by his enthusiasm! Bring a relative or friend and come join us. Mac or PC user, it doesn't matter; Dean has the answers you need!

PBMUG meets at the West Palm Beach municipal library, on the lover level. Directions to the library are here. Question and Answer session begins at 6:30 P.M.

As we come to the close of this year, we face a real crossroad in the group. Be sure the read the three posts below, beginning with Larry's The Decline and Fall of User Groups. Then consider Nancy's plea, PBMUG needs your help!, and finally, Brian's End of Summer President’s Message. Then, if you haven't already logged in, do so, and leave comments here. Let your thoughts be known, especially if you will not be at the next meeting!

Think you're safe because you have a Mac? That's dangerous thinking. Duane Hawk offers this article from MacLife for a sobering insight into how safe Macs really are: Unlock The Truth About Mac Security Risks

From the article:

“I am not going to jump up and down and rant that everyone needs to run antivirus—that would be idiotic,” says Romo[Macintosh project manager for Symantec]. “But that being said, in mid-June we had four threats come out in six days, including a keylogger.”

It’s actually quite difficult to write a virus for Mac OS X. But there are other ways to compromise a computer aside from infecting it with a virus.

Check out the article. Read the whole thing. We all need to know this.

Greetings PBMUG members!

Welcome back! I hope everyone had a truly wonderful summer. I know many of our members (including myself) were out and about traveling this past summer. I hope you’ve made it back safe and sound from your adventures.

Before I address this month’s newsletter, I want to sincerely apologize to those members and visitors who made the trip all the way downtown for our September meeting expecting to see an iPhone 3G exhibition. At the last moment, I received word that our scheduled presenter was unable to attend due to illness. I, too, was unable to attend the meeting due to work obligations, which brings me to this month’s discourse and my humble plea, echoed by Nancy Sheridan’s fine article, “PBMUG needs your help!”

This is a very difficult column for me to write. This has been such an arduous year for so many of you on so many fronts. It’s only human nature, but most individuals abhor a sense of uncertainty. Yet we are indeed living in the midst of uncertain times.

As I write this, look at the ripples spreading through the political and financial world in just this past month:

• Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin had her private email account hacked into twice (check out Duane Hawk’s informative article on internet/email security)
• Washington Mutual was sold to J. P. Morgan Chase in the largest bank failure in U.S. history
• Foreclosures have been running at an all time high, with in many cases the property value being less than the amount of money owed on the house (those of us who live in Florida are well aware of that fact)
• Lehman Brothers filed Chapter 11 Bankruptcy
• Merrill Lynch was sold to Bank of America
• The Federal Government announced a bail out of mortgage lenders, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae
• In one day, Insurance Giant AIG lost close to 70% of its stock value leading the federal government to step in and give it assistance

I could go on and on with uncertain, negative news that has everyone a little nervous these days. Many of our members have gone through the most difficult situation of their life this year, the loss of health, a lost job, the loss of a home, a lost relationship, or something else equally as painful. Whatever the case, we can cling to the fact that life is about change!

If you think about it, the Internet is less than 5,000 days old, and yet, look at how it has changed the way we live. It has remarkably changed how we communicate with each other (MySpace, Facebook), how we market goods and services (eBay, Amazon), how we do our research (WebMD, Google), etc. In the field of technology, change is happening at such an incredibly fast pace it's become increasingly difficult to keep up with.
PBMUG is affected by change also, as referenced by one of PBMUG’s most revered veterans, Larry Grinnell, in his most recent Blog, titled “The Decline and Fall of User Groups”

The good news is: The sun is going to rise tomorrow. And while some people may want to throw in the towel and just give up, we know we can keep going, growing and improving. It’s really that simple.

Come November, you’ll have the opportunity to vote not only for the direction of the country, but also for the future of our venerable PBMUG. Elections for club officers - President, Vice-President, Secretary, Treasurer, and Member At-Large positions are all open, as is the position of Newsletter Editor. If you are a member in good standing, I would like you to consider stepping forward to keep the club going.
The question is, “Are you willing to step forward?”

Brian Bahe

PBMUG Grand PooBah

I recently finished a fascinating book on the founding fathers of this country. As I read the book, an interesting phrase “the hand of providence” kept popping up. Whether you believe in God, a higher power, nature, or whatever, this phrase got me thinking.

How does the “hand of providence” work in this world? Doesn’t it work through people?

When you receive a gift or an expression of love, how does it come to you? From an individual or a group people?

When you are reprimanded or disciplined, how does it come to you? It comes from a person or a small group of people, yes?

When you receive guidance and instruction, how does it come to you? From another party or a small group of people, right?

If our MUG is going to be able to continue on as a resource to the Palm Beach area, we need an expression of support. How will it come to us? I’m hoping it will be you!

The board is counting on enough people responding to this article. In a good month we might get 8 to 10 people who contribute to our website. We need to double that or even triple that number in order for it to make the difference we need. Will you be one of those people? Will you make a decision to “step up to the plate” with us in this unusually difficult time?

We have seen membership participation steadily decline. Short of cancelling our monthly meetings, which would mean reducing the group to an online community, there is not much more we can do to continue without your active involvement.

As many of you know, I work in a nursing home tending to the needs of the elderly. As silly as this may sound, I feel the work we do at PBMUG is very similar. We reach out to people in need of help. Our different board members have helped people who need someone to come to their rescue and assist them in their quest for lost emails, or to find a project that seems to be lost in cyberspace, or to sympathize with the pain of realizing MAC OS 9 isn’t coming back.

That’s what this user group is all about!

PBMUG has been like a hospital to me. . . it has been an emergency room for me when, figuratively speaking, I was having a heart attack because my computer crashed and I NEEDED that presentation done tomorrow, it has been a critical care unit, and long term care all rolled into one. As a patient, the clogged arteries I’ve suffered with are of a different sort – learning new things. The arthritis is often an emotional or intellectual variety.

All humor aside, our "hospital" needs a transfusion to continue. I’m counting on you, our membership community, to keep this hospital we call PBMUG alive and open for business!

Thank you for your support.

PBMUG Treasurer,

Nancy Sheridan

PBMUG Prez Brian Bahe has asked me to write about the decline of computer user groups and the PBMUG in particular.

As I wrote in a previous blog, relating the history of the PBMUG as I knew it, we have been suffering from continually decreasing membership rolls. I think there are a number of reasons for this.

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