Recently Adam Engst from TidBITS published an excellent article entitled “Think Like a Publisher” that we believe all Apple User Group Leaders should read.

The personal computer — and the dynamic duo of the Macintosh and LaserWriter in particular — revolutionized print publishing by making it easy to whip up a brochure, flyer, or newsletter. The Internet extended our individual publishing capabilities even further, enabling anyone to send bulk email, start a blog, or set up a Web site.

And while anyone can now publish something, not everyone gets it right! However, Adam’s advice makes it easy for everyone to start thinking like a professional publisher! Continue reading »

Yes, AppleUsers.org and the AppleUsers Spotlight are alive and well! We’ve just taken a slightly longer hiatus than we expected, but we’re coming back real soon now — Bigger and Better than before! Continue reading »

Write Saturday, September 17, 2011 on your calendar… It’s Software Freedom Day 2011 and we are again encouraging all Australian Apple User Groups to participate in local events, or organise your own.

Software Freedom Day (SFD) is a worldwide celebration of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). Their goal in this celebration is to educate the worldwide public about of the benefits of using high quality FOSS in education, in government, at home, and in business — in short, everywhere! The non-profit company Software Freedom International coordinates SFD at a global level, providing support, giveaways and a point of collaboration, but volunteer teams around the world organize the local SFD events to impact their own communities. Continue reading »

The Jun/Jul 2011 issue of the AppleUsers Spotlight is our largest issue yet, weighing in at a massive 103 pages. It is now available in PDF format and can be read using Adobe Reader or Preview under Mac OS X, Adobe Reader for Windows and now in iBooks on the iPad, iPhone and iPad touch. Continue reading »

Microsoft are offering leaders of Apple User Groups a “Meeting-in-a-Box” to allow them to present Microsoft Office 2011 for Macintosh to your members. Continue reading »

MacProVideo.com are offering Apple User Groups worldwide a dozen “Core Library Passes” for use as Raffle Prizes at their meetings. Continue reading »

The Microsoft User Group Support Services (UGSS) needs to properly understand the needs of both User Group Leaders AND Members so that they can support the technical community to the best of their ability.

To help them achieve this, they are requesting that both Leaders AND Members of User Groups complete a short survey before the end of February 2011. Continue reading »

Stellar’s new Mac-Drive Tool Box is revolutionary software to enhance performance of your Mac system. Mac-Drive Tool Box is a set of more than 12 utilities that help you maintain, manage and speed up your Mac System.

The Apple User Group Advisory Board have arranged for Apple User Groups leaders to obtain a fully licensed and functional copy of Mac-Drive Tool Box, free of charge. Continue reading »

Software Freedom Day (SFD) is a worldwide celebration of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). Their goal in this celebration is to educate the worldwide public about of the benefits of using high quality FOSS in education, in government, at home, and in business — in short, everywhere! The non-profit company Software Freedom International coordinates SFD at a global level, providing support, giveaways and a point of collaboration, but volunteer teams around the world organize the local SFD events to impact their own communities.

Software Freedom Day for 2010 will be held on Saturday, September 18 and registration for teams wishing to participate has opened. But if your team would like access to SFD giveaways, get in quick as only registrations received within the next 10 days will be eligible. Continue reading »

Recently we have been updating our list of active Apple User Groups in Australia as we’ve seen one group fold, another start up and a few whose details had changed and we thought this would be an opportune time to seek any other active Apple User Groups that may wish to be included in our listings. Continue reading »

In recent times, there has been much publicity for charities and fundraisers for overseas disasters and the like. This got us thinking about how the team here at AppleUsers.org could assist others less fortunate than ourselves, but it was felt that we’d rather support a “local” charity, so we set out a few criteria to help us decide which organization we’d like to help promote.

Some of the criteria we used to help us select an appropriate group, included (in no particular order):

• Ideally be a national based organisation (as our readership is national, and our own team is currently spread across at least three states)
• Provides services to the Youth of Australia
• Preferably have some relevance to technology

and one group immediately sprung to mind — The Smith Family! Continue reading »

Our Community and Westpac are undertaking a search to find Australia’s Kookaburras – the loud and proud stirrers – the community groups, the people and the projects that changed our communities for the better.

They can be a little loud, a bit raucous,
sometimes slightly unpleasant on the ear.
But as a country we would be devastated without them.
They’re distinctive. They’re iconic. They’re impossible to ignore.
They’re our Kookaburras.

The 2010 Kookaburra Awards will offer prizes to individuals, groups and projects that really made a difference – that stretch people’s vision of what’s possible in Australia’s society today.

At times, we might think of these people as ratbags, or cranks, or worse.
We call them radical, or subversive, or infuriatingly single-minded. But we can’t deny that they made a difference in the world. Nominate now for a 2010 Kookaburra Award! Continue reading »

Over the Easter 2010 break, AppleUsers.org bought forward a planned migration to a new internet hosting provider by nearly two weeks, due to unforeseen difficulties with the old server.

While we had a few minor hiccups due to the suddenness of the move, the transition has actually gone reasonably well. The main issue was waiting for various ISP’s DNS servers to update with the changes to our DNS records.

We don’t believe any mail has has been lost during the switch over, but if you have sent any mail between April 1st and April 4th ADST and you have not received a reply from us, please resend the email.

If you see this message on the AppleUsers.org website, then you are now seeing the new AppleUsers.org server and any email you send us should reach us.

We wish to take this opportunity to thank Ben May over at our new web hosts, Alyte, for his assistance late Good Friday evening and throughout Easter Saturday helping us make this transition go much more smoothly than expected.

The Australian Government has committed $15 million over three years (2008-2011) to provide free access to computers, broadband services and training to seniors by creating approximately 2,000 senior internet kiosks nation-wide. These kiosk services will be delivered nationally through local community organisations or in any suitable public place that services seniors, which would include many Australian Apple User Groups. Continue reading »