The Mac Store in Eugene has a host of special prices on Apple Brand and related goodies.

In addition, Jeff Scoble says the following special prices are offered only to EMUG members. If you’re not sure of your membership status we’ll be happy to check it for you.

Griffin TuneBuds blue or red: retail - $14.95 EMUG price - $9.95

Kingston 4GB DataTraveler: retail - $49.95 EMUG price - $34.95 (Jeff says, “I know I said a $10 discount, but what the heck…”)

Also don’t forget the 500GB LaCie Hard Drive free with trade-in of a qualifying Mac! This offer also includes migration of your files from the trade-in to your new Mac (There are some restrictions. The trade in value must be at least $100.). This is a great way to get credit toward your new Mac and you’ll end up with your Time Machine backup drive as well.

We thank The Mac Store for these offers and for their support through the years. We’ll see you in January for discussion and follow-up to the events at MacWorld.

This month we’ll revel in the cornucopia of goodies offered to Mac users this holiday season. Jeff Scoble from The Mac Store will show his picks for the coolest, most useful, and best designed items for your Mac, iPod, iPhone, camera and your life. It’s always a fun show. He will have fliers for the special packages and prices the store has for you. Check out their migration special for your old Mac. It involves a 500GB LaCie hard drive and the migration of your files to your new Mac!

We meet a week early (this month only) in order to even the load on the Veterans Building during December. We’re upstairs in the Green Room (the old Chess Room). There’s a dance group using the space until 6:30 so we’ll want to respect their space. We’ll be ready to move tables and chairs in immediately after they finish.

As always, the Macintosh Mystery Hour precedes the main meeting. Bring your questions. Bring your answers. Bring a friend!

We got thoroughly involved with the new Mac laptops last month because of the high level of audience interest. Web security was the planned topic but it didn’t even take a back seat. This month we’ll actually explore the topic. Despite the perception that there are no serious viruses or trojans for the Mac OS there are still plenty of opportunities for mischief to occur.

Also, we want to emphasize the availability of tutorials and educational podcasts through iTunes university and other sources. We’ll try to point out specific ones that have impressed us. You can help. Be prepared with path data so we can point out your favorite educational podcasts.

As always, the Macintosh Mystery Hour precedes the main meeting. Bring your questions. Bring your answers. Bring a friend!

We plan to discuss basic web security. MacWorld has an article on this that Dick wants to reprise and expand upon. We’ll point out some tools and tricks to use to keep your Mac and your data safe and secure.

Clearwire recently switched their in-house email system over to Google’s Gmail. This has not been without its share of “opportunities to learn.”.

Then there’s Guy Kawasaki! His latest big thing is Alltop. It’s a different taqke on a news aggregation site. Check it out!

As always, the Macintosh Mystery Hour precedes the main meeting. Bring your questions. Bring your answers. Bring a friend!

The September meeting will highlight the latest incarnation of iTunes. We’ll take a look at the new features and the revisions of old features. We’ll also check out the iPhone software upgrade.

The Macintosh Mystery Hour precedes the main meeting. Bring your questions. Bring your answers. Bring a friend!

Our August picnic was rained out so we met back at the Veterans building. We had a smaller than normal turnout but everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.

The Macintosh Mystery Hour was lively and wide ranging as usual. We had no main meeting topic but that didn’t seem to slow us down. Rodney Jensen stepped in with a presentation on Spaces – Apple’s multiple-desktop organizer. This was his first real presentation before the group and he did well and handed the inevitable glitch quite well. Good job, Rod!

Dick Lennox showed a large number of iPhone Applications. Some of these demonstrated extension of features from the Mac OS to iPhone Apps. Check out iGraffiti, Jott, Evernote, Pandora, Sketches, MagicPad, Picoli, Face Melter, and SpeakEasy. Then there are iPint and iBeer which have no redeeming value – but I want them both!

Thanks to all who braved the elements!

It’s gonna rain! Who’da thunk it?

We’ll meet at our usual place – the Veternan’s Memorial Building at 16th & Willamette at the usual time. 6:30 for the Macintosh Mystery Hour. We’ll be winging it for the main meeting. Dick has some iPhone Applications to show off and we have some other goodies to dispose of.

Bring your questions. Bring your answers. Bring a friend!

This month well just relax and have a picnic. This meeting is open to members and their families and significant others. Members can also bring friends. We’ll light the grill at 5:30.

The place is Charnel Mulligan Park at 17th & Charnelton. That’s 2 blocks west of the Veterans’ Building where we normally meet. It’s a beautiful urban park with shaded eating space and lots of space for the kids to play. There’s a small market (Cornucopia) down the street if you forget anything and Safeway is 3 blocks away if you REALLY forget something.

EMUG will provide hamburgers, hot dogs, veggie burgers, buns, condiments, soda and paper plates. Bring side dishes, chips or salad. Bring your own cutlery (We’ll have some spares available).

Bring a friend and bring a smile!

After a bit of a rocky start, Apple has the iTunes servers up and running and the upgrade to iPhone 2.0 is working. The iPhone App Store is open and has quite a number of really useful apps available.

The Macintosh Mystery Hour precedes the main meeting. Bring your questions. Bring your answers. Bring a friend!

When we began to plan the content for June’s meeting we had no idea that MAC|LIFE Magazine was planning the same thing. While our lists did overlap, we came up with several varying preferences within the group in attendance. Thanks to all for your participation. Deanne DuFresne sent me several ideas, some of which we didn’t touch on during the meeting. They are part of the list.

INTERNET

• Adium - Cross platform/Service instant messaging
• NewsFire - RSS reader
• Twitterrific read and publish to the Twitter community
• Chax - makes iChat more enjoyable
• Cyberduck - FTP, SFTP, WebDAV & Amazon S3 Browser for Mac OS X.
• Call Recorder - Automatically Record Skype Calls

EMAIL

• TextExpander - Mac Typing Shortcut Utility Saves You Time!
• Mail Attachments Iconizer - take control of email attachments.
• MailTags - Adds enhanced organization to Apple’s Mail

PRODUCTIVITY

• Scrivener - Outline. Edit. Storyboard. Write!
• Anxiety - Lightweight To-do Management
• celtx - Integrated Media Pre-Production
• Yep! - it’s iPhoto for PDFs
• Inquisitor 3 - Spotlight for the web.
• Yojimbo - organize information of any sort
• Desktop Curtain - makes your screenshots cleaner looking
• Witch - keyboard shortcuts for window switching
• FileChute - Send files too large to email.
• ThisService - Create services from any script
• A Better Finder Rename - Rename LOTS of files. Quick and easy!
• Terragen - photorealistic scenery rendering software
• SketchUp - create, modify and share 3D models
• VueScan - Runs your scanner. Works with over 750 scanners. Very powerful!
• Quicken equivalents - a discussion thread on the topic at Tidbits.com
• myNotes - an easy note manager for your Mac
• MacAstronomica - turn your laptop into a guide to the night sky
• World of Where - Learn geography on your Mac

MEDIA

• Acorn - image editor
• Pixelmator - image editor
• ImageWell - image editor
• Audacity - audio editor and recorder
• HandBrake - DVD to MPEG-4 converter
• Doug’s AppleScripts for iTunes - makes maintaining you music collection fun!
• VLC media player - cross platform media player and server
• Connect360 - share your iTunes and iPhoto files to our Xbox 360
• Graphic Converter - convert images from one format to another
• Mac the Ripper - a DVD extractor for OS X
• Times - a different RSS reader
• CDpedia - organize and manage your CD collection
• Jing - capture and share video and images
• Pandora - A new kind of radio station just for you!
• Senuti - transfer music from your iPod to your Mac
• Screenshot Plus - Screen capture widget

UTILITIES

• GeekTool - brings out the Geek in you
• TextMate — The Missing Editor for Mac OS X
• Coda - One-Window Web Development for Mac OS X
• Transmit 3 - takes FTP to the next level. Again.
• SuperDuper! - Heroic system recovery for mere mortals!

GAMES

• Battle for Wesnoth - opensource fantasy wargame