Saturday, January 21st-Getting Ready for the Presentation

I'm getting ready for my presentation before MacValley on Wednesday, February 1^st. I look forward to seeing you there.

The topic will “5 tips for getting your Mac to run smoothly”. I'm basing the presentation on Joli Ballew's classic book “Degunking Your mac, Tiger Edition”. So thank you, Ms. Ballew. Your book still covers the heart of the problem with using a Mac. You build up digital clutter as you use it. You put stuff on the Mac's desktop and don't put it back in its proper folder after you finish with it. Mail comes in and just sits on your hard drive.

I'm guilty of it, you're guilty of it. So I'll show you how to do something about it Wednesday, February 1^st.

Apple introduces Digital Publishing tool,

Apple released Ibooks Author this week. I haven't tried it. If you have tried it, put your comments down below.

I have read Serenity Caldwell's articles on-line at Macworld.com She points out that only one readily available piece of software, Google Code's Sigil, lets you directly edit ePub books. Sigil has only one developer, who's creating versions for Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X. So Sigil is not optimized for Mac OS X. It's at version 0.5 right now, so don't expect perfection.

A Statement of Editorial Policy

As Editor of the MacValley Voice, I plan to emphasize housekeeping this year. Digital housekeeping, as in keeping your Mac running in top form. As in keeping your records in order. Perhaps even keeping your house in order.

I own a lot of books on this broad topic, from Joli Ballew, David Allen on Getting Things Done, and the Flylady and her crew on the topic of personal housekeeping. You'll see quotes this year from them in my articles.

I don't have the resources to review every new piece of software or hardware. I hope to get an iPad and a new Mac Mini so that I can cover 10.7 Lion and iOS 5.

I welcome comments from all, especially my fellow MacValley members.