SHAREWARE NEWS

SMUG May '96 Disk of the Month

assembled by Rich Kubota

AllDay 4.6 - builds a yearly calendar within a separate window. Once displayed, it is possible to thumb backward or forward through the years or to jump to a certain year via a separate dialog. English and German. 68K and PPC versions. Free.

Autumn Leaves is an After Dark module for Macintosh computers, which produces swirling patterns of particles, not unlike the blowing of leaves in an turbulent wind. 68K and PPC versions. Free.

BigSecret 3.0 - works by setting the invisible attribute for files and folders. Once you startup BigSecret and type your password, you can add files to the list of 'secret files' by doing one of the following:

CalendarMenu 3.01 - provides a new menu item beside the guide menu which displays a tear-off menu calendar. $10

Crystal Cursor 1996 - This little crystal replaces the black arrow. It's transparent and shimmers when you drag it over colored icons etc. Kind of neat,if you like extraordinary things. Free.

Dos2Mac (fat) 2.1 - converts your TEXT files from DOS to Macintosh format and vice versa. It translates not only the CR but also all possible 'exotic' chars like éàçè¹£ß... . It runs full speed on Power Mac and *classic* Mac, and supports Drag & Drop. English and French versions. Postcardware

DoubleScroll 2.0 is a combination Extension/Control Panel which alters the way your Macintosh scroll bars look and act. Basically it puts a double arrow on each end of your scroll bars, allowing you to scroll in both directions without having to move your mouse from one end of your desk to the other to scroll back and forth. It works with System 7 and above, and is designed to take advantage of the color scheme of the System 7 interface. It also works very nicely with the Aaron extension, enabling double-arrows in Aaron's look. $3.00

Drive Monitor 1.0

Euphoria! 1.5 - is designed to help out anybody who has to administer a network and is using Eudora as their Internet e-mail solution. Euphoria! allows a user to set their real name, and their userID, and it will make up a new Eudora Folder using these settings that the user can use to check their mail.

eXpress v3.0.0 allows you to access the Process menu (the one on the far right side of the menu bar in System 7) from anywhere on the screen. Simply hold down the key combination you have selected and click the mouse button. The "Process" menu will pop up right at your mouse. $10

Fat Cursors v1.2.1 - is a system extension/control panel that installs slightly larger Arrow and IBeam cursors. If you've ever seen the standard cursors on a PowerBook 180c, or if you just have a hard time finding the cursor on your screen, you'll definitely be able to appreciate this utility! Fat Cursors v1.2.1 also features a "find cursor" function that works on any Mac (not just PowerBooks!). $10

Jade v1.02 - is a JPEG viewer based on the Independent JPEG Group's library of JPEG compression and decompression routines. It's main purpose is to fill the gap in Macintosh JPEG viewers which can view full sized JPEG images while maintaining reasonable memory and speed requirements. It was also made to be useful as a helper application in Netscape or any other web browser application that supports helpers. Free.

Secret Finder Features - Some new features in 7.5.3 have not been enabled, because Apple has not had time to thoroughly test them. But this extension enables them so that you can:

Snooze Alarm v3.0 - an Alarm Clock program that would actually wake you up on mornings instead of just bleeping once. Includes a snooze function for your nasty habit of going straight back to bed and falling asleep again. $10.

TableCloth 1.5 - is a small AppleScript applet which converts tab-delimited text to HTML table format; because it converts simple ASCII text, it can convert files from a multitude of spreadsheet and database applications. Users of MicrosoftÕs Excel, ClarisÕClarisWorks, LotusÕ1-2-3, and ClarisÕFileMaker Pro can all benefit from the easy table generation which TableCloth provides. EMailware

TagStripper v1.0f - is a small drag'n'drop utility that, to put it simply, removes all HTML tags from a text file. Also includes NetStripper, which changes DOS or Unix files to Mac files (different end-of-line, for one thing). FAT. $15

TroubleShooting 101 - a document DA which gives good basic information, somewhat a tutorial, to solve common bombs and freezes. Does not deal with Sad Macs. Free.

GAMES 1 disk

to replace a VERY old 800K disk we released about 5 years ago.

BricklesPlus-v4.0 - a Brick-out style game with colored bricks. $15

Canf6.0 - Canfield solitaire game. $10

cNimb20 - something like Tetris - you specify the shapes. $1

Desk Invaders II - Desk Invaders is a DA implementation of the classic arcade shoot-em-up. Now you can shoot away at those critters whenever the stress of using your Mac becomes too much, no matter what application you may be running! Free.

Euchre 5.3 - a game played with 24 cards. $20

Game of the Winds 1.0 - A variation of Mahjongg. $5

Golf6.0 - Golf solitaire card game. $10

Klon6.0 - Klondike solitaire game. $20

Mancala1.0 - An African stone game - the object is to get all the stones in your own mancala. Free.

Mine - a minefield game. Free.

Montana 2.1 - a solitaire game with 48 cards. $10

Munchies v1.0 - Guide Melvin the Munchie using the mouse. Eat all the food to open the exit, and go through the exit to get to the next level. Continue from there, eating from level to level, fighting enemies as you go. $8.

Pacman - the classic video game. Free

Pinochle - This version of double-deck Pinochle was taught to the author by his/her parents. If you prefer a more widely known source, the closest game s/he found to it in Hoyle is the "wipe-off" variation of "double-pack" Pinochle. $20

Poker Solitaire v0.9ß - The object is to get a poker hand in each row - 3 of a kind or better. $5

SILENT AUCTION/FLEA MARKET

Every month the shareware team helps members sell equipment, software, and hardware they no longer need. Please keep this a success by visiting our tables and bidding on these items. Here is how it works:

1. Bring your item to the next general meeting.
2. Fill out an auction sheet with your name, a description of the item, and a minimum asking bid.
3. Leave the item, the sheet, and a donation with the shareware table people. The donation is whatever you think is fair - maybe 10% of your asking bid. You can pay after.
4. At the break, go back to the table and check out the bids on your sheet. Pick the person you want to sell to, find him/her, and make the deal. (If you bid, please check during the break to see if you can connect with the seller). Please do not wait till after the meeting, as some team members need to go home and we can not promise to stay at the table forever!
5. You can leave a telephone number on the sheet if that is how you want to be contacted. But the shareware team will NOT make deliveries!

PLEASE NOTE: We will make every effort to keep your item secure. However we take no responsibility, and theft is your risk alone. We suggest you keep easily stolen items, like SIMM chips, with you and just leave the auction sheet.

Sorry, we cannot provide electrical power to demo hardware.

We cannot be held responsible for items forgotten by their owners.

Tip O' the Month

From Your Shareware Team

Netscape for the Mac and Netscape for Windows use different color palettes. The Windows palette has only 216 colors, while the Macintosh palette has 65536 colors. The problem with this is that almost any web page color can be nicely displayed on a Mac, but on Windoz machines, most of them have to be DITHERED, which does not always look kool. We want our pages to look kool, don't we?

There are, obviously, 216 colors which look the same on both Mac and Windoz. Web colors are specified in a 6 digit hexadecimal number as follows: "#rrggbb". rr stands for the hex number for red, gg for the hex number for green, and bb for the hex number for blue. Exactly 6 2-digit hex numbers are used in Windoz for each color: 00 (black) 33, 66, 99, CC, and FF (brightest). The icky color on this page is "#AA99FF". AA is not one of the numbers in the list above, but you are reading this on a Mac anyhow, right? Windoz viewers will just have to put up with a slightly dithered background.

All 216 colors also display correctly on a Mac set to 256 colors.

Incidentally, don't mess with textured backgrounds, or, worse yet, background pictures. Put all pictures by themselves. The text reads best in dark type on clean light backgrounds (all 3 numbers 99 or above). The next version of HTML allows specifying font, but for now you have to let the viewer select the font.

1. In ANOTHER folder, create a file with the exact same name. DO NOT COPY from the original.
2. Drag and drop it onto the folder containing the nasty file. Let the finder replace with the new version.
3. Now you can trash it.

1. DO NOT BUY FANCY POWERBOOK CARRYING CASES. They are dead giveaways to thieves. Keep the PowerBooks in backpacks or gym bags or large shoulder bags e.
2. Create a startup screen with your photograph and information on it. Scan in a photograph of yourself or your company logo and add some text to it stating something like "This computer belongs to the person/department pictured to the left. If anyone else has this computer, be advised that it could be stolen. Please contact...". Possible information to add are : Name, work phone, social security #, serial number (as this may be scratched off the computer's exterior), and local police #
3. Create an invisible partition on your hard drive with the same information suggested in the above startup screen idea. Most thieves won't even erase the hard drive of a stolen computer - even if they do, they will most likely do so by dragging things to the trash. Even if they do this, if the computer is recovered, you can prove it belongs to you by mounting that partition and showing the information. You will need a hard drive utility like Apple's HDSC setup, Silverlining, APS Powertools, etc... Create the smallest partition you can (you only need to store a TeachText document and maybe a PICT resource if you include your picture) and store the information on this partition. Make it invisible and non-"automounting" and you have another safeguard. This can be done for desktop machines as well.

One very likely "cause" of this "failure" is that the Energy Saver software is making the drive spin down during the testing, which causes the diagnostics report that the hard drive has failed its tests.

To avoid this, in the Energy Saver control panel, set the Sleep Setup option to "Never" before you begin the testing procedure. This will prevent the Energy Saver software from spinning down the drive and allow the hardware testing utility software to properly check the functionality of the hard drive.

Too Obvious for Words

If your shareware is warning you after 30 days to register and you just can't spring the piddling greenbacks to do so, you can sometimes remove the warning (for another 30 days) by trashing the preference item in the preference folder. Of course, you lose your preferences, but it is a small price to avoid paying the hard-working author for his time and effort.

Like you and me, the Finder sometimes gets behind in its work. You need to slow down in this case or you can get some unusual results. If you click on something and then move your pointer, the Finder will note the click and locate the pointer when it has time - it may then think you clicked where your pointer is NOW, not where it was when you clicked. Usually the Finder gives feedback about where it thinks you clicked. Wait for it.

If you select a bunch of text and then decide you want to add on more text to your selection (with no unselected text in-between), you do not have to click and drag all over again. Just move your pointer to the end of the additional text, hold down the shift key, then click again.

Mac diskettes? PC diskettes? BALDERDASH! All 3.5in HD disks are the same! Only the format is different. Getting a lot of useless AOL diskettes in PC format? Just pop them in your machine and reformat (Erase). They make perfectly good Mac diskettes. Don't believe the garbage from salespeople in computer stores. Just buy HD diskettes and you are set. (Why do people persist in this fiction, that PC diskettes don't work on Macs?!)

Check it again: in the Views control panel, turn off Calculate Folder Size. This option has wasted more CPU time that the designers of Windoz 95!

NEW PRODUCT RELEASES

(hot link on vendor name -> vendor home page,
hot link on product name -> product page, possible download)

3M announced development of a 120Meg 3.5inch MO disk - exactly the same format as our familiar 1.44Meg HD floppies. In fact, when drives for it come out, they should be able to read the old HD floppies.

The new release is now out of Adobe PageMill 1.0.2. This replaces the buggy 1.0.1 withdrawn last month. And this just in - shortly Adobe will demo PageMill version 2!

Adobe shipped PageMaker 6.01 in mid-March.

Aladdin Systems' Desktop Tools 1.0.1 is not compatible with MacOS 7.5.3. A fix is on the way. They also plan this month to release StuffIt Deluxe 4.0 which will include better integration with the Finder as well as enhanced e-mail and Internet capabilities.

Apple has released a new version of PowerTalk (1.2.3) to their Software Directories. It is included on the System 7.5 Update 2.0 CD, so if you have already ordered it, don't bother to retrieve this file.

If you use the DOS card on a PowerMac 6100 and have just installed 7.5.3, you'll discover your Windows (sic) CD-ROM disks are inaccessible. The new CD-ROM driver that replaces version 5.0.4 does not work with them.

If you open the Password Security control panel on PowerBook 5300 or 190 series, and see that the password security is turned on and is set for "ask password on wake", the unit will not sleep. Turn the option off to let the PowerBook sleep. This issue is expected to be resolved in future versions of the system software.

You may have heard reports of a faulty logic board in 5300 series PowerBooks. In fact, though Apple asked its dealers to send back logic boards for redesign, there has been no recall. The problem looks like a system hang when attempting network download directly to a floppy, but this only happens when running on internal battery power - there is just not enough to run both the PCMCIA card and the floppy drive at the same time. Owners can take their machines to authorized Apple dealers for the redesign, if they can afford the week or two without their PowerBooks. Otherwise, just make sure you use external power, or move the file to the hard drive first.

Apple announced new QuickTime 2.5. The new QuickTime will bring improvements to Motion-JPEG, and sound as well as other additional features.

To download more QuickTime VR scenes, see http://www.vr360.com/gallery/14.mov. Netscape will try to run with SimplePlayer - just quit and launch QuickTime VR instead.

CE Software Inc. will add a new tab interface and batch processing this summer to its $119 QuicKeys, Version 3.5, which was last updated in 1993. Each tab will represent a set of shortcuts common to one application.

Claris Corp. released FileMaker Pro 3.0v2.

Claris Corp. has posted ClarisWorks update 4.0v4 that adds new features, drag-and-drop support, and squashes some bugs. It also adds the ability to convert ClarisWorks 4.0 files to 2.0, 2.1 and 3.0 formats. It is free.

On PowerBooks with MacOS 7.5.3, RamDoubler 1.6.1 causes a Type 8 crash when waking. Until Connectix upgrades RamDoubler, you should have MacsBug installed to prevent the crash. There is a patcher (with documentation) to fix this at ftp://www.ridgecrest.ca.us/pub/users/a/andreoli/7.5.3Update.hqx.

Connectix released Speed Doubler 1.1.2 Updater which fixes several bugs. Also, as mentioned last month, you may need their AppleShare 3.6.1 Patch.

A new PCMCIA card designed to replace V.34 modems allows laptop users to get online and connect to the Internet or to corporate networks at up to 128Kbps, or ISDN speed is scheduled for a May release by Eicon Technology .
The card, called the Diva Terminal Adapter (T/A) is designed to replace the standard V.34 modem in laptops or standalone remote-access servers.

Global Village Communications has released Teleport 2.5.6 communications software.

Insignia Solutions has released the latest version(s) of their SoftWindows emulation software. They are: SoftWindows 3.0 and SoftWindows 95 (with Windows 95 bundled and configured for fast launch).

Iomega Corp. released Iomega Driver 4.3 for BOTH their ZIP and JAZ drives (one driver!). This does not run the Bernoulli drives. Naturally, it is SCSI Manager 4.3 compatible (hence the version number).

Greg Landweber has updated Aaron 1.3 (68K), Aaron 1.3 (fat), and Greg's Buttons 3.7.5 to work around bugs in system 7.5.3. We have demoed both of these in the past.

MetaTools Inc., developer of graphics-manipulations tools such as Kai's Power Tools and KPT Bryce, is developing an image-editing program to be marketed as Kai's Power Goo. It allows you to warp images to ludicrous degrees. Mice & Men's Desktop Strip may not show on the desktop after 7.5.3 is installed. This happened to me and I was most annoyed. It seems the 7.5.3 installation creates a Control Strip Folder in the System Folder and forces Desktop Strip or Control Strip to look in there for its modules. But it creates it empty. No modules, no strip. Solution: move the modules from the Desktop Strip Folder to the Control Strip Folder and everything will work just fine. But first, install the newest update, Desktop Strip 1.2.1

Internet Assistant for Microsoft Excel is a free utility to help Excel users convert spreadsheets into HTML tables. It works with Excel 5 for Mac, and Power Mac. The tool can be downloaded from Microsoft's Web site at http://www.Microsoft.com/macoffice.

Netscape has a new browser in beta: Navigator Atlas Preview Release 1. It includes support for Open Transport. (It may be an early version of version 3.0!) It is 4Meg in size and expires July 15. They also released Netscape Chat 2.0b6 - a network chat plug-in.

Now Software released a public beta of their Now Utilities 6.0. Full version to be released 29 Mar.
When using Now Utilities 5.0.1 under 7.5.3, users have noted randomly disappearing Recent Items in the Apple Menu. Registered 5.0.1 users can download a demo of 5.0.2 from http://www.nowsoft.com. After installing the demo, users can enter their registration numbers to make the demo a full working version of 5.0.2, compatible with PCI Macintoshes and System 7.5.3.

Francois Pottier has released Decor 3.0.1.

Qualcomm released a "synchronous I/O" plug-in to help Eudora Pro work around a problem with System 7.5.3 and RAM Doubler. And they are reportedly prepping a new version of its $89 Internet mail client for release in April. Eudora Pro 3.0 will provide styled text and embedded URLs, and more-powerful address books, mail filtering and search capabilities.

RockStar Studios (I kid you not) released FreePPP 2.5 at the end of March. Well, maybe a little late.

SoftArc has released its new First Class Client version 3.1. It now supports Open Transport.

SoundMachine 2.5.4 has been released. It helps Netscape play sounds.

SUMMARY.NET has begun delivering its EasyServe FREE Macintosh Web Server software through its WWW site.

Surfwatch has released the Surfwatch 1.x/Netscape 2.0 Patch

Symantec Corp. released an upgrade to Symantec C++ 8.0 for Power Macintosh. Release 5 comes with a Pascal compiler, letting developers with code written for 680x0 Macs generate native Power Mac applications. It also includes both C and C++ compilers for 680x0 applications, Apple's MrC PowerPC compiler and support for Motorola Inc.'s new PowerPC compiler.

MacOS 7.5.3 includes drivers for SyQuest cartridge drives. They are part of the PC Exchange control panel. Also, MacOS 7.5.3 needs SCSI Manager 4.3-saavy drivers for anything on the SCSI chain. This includes your hard disk. If you use a third-party disk driver purchased before 1995, your system may crash! The update disks contain Apple HD SC software including a 4.3-saavy driver which you should install first, unless your vendor provides a replacement.

White Pine Software will soon come out with a Mac version of their enhanced, COLOR CU-SeeMe teleconferencing software. It costs $99, unlike the original from Cornell, which was free.

You can sign up for a free service informing you of updates to products you specify. Log on to VERSIONS on the Web (http://www.versions.com).

©copyright 1996, Louis Bookbinder - booky1@earthlink.net
Stanford University  -  updated 3 August 1996