President's File
July 2010

(The President's message will occasionally be writen by editor Patrick Libert)

Where were you when I needed you?

by Patrick Libert

YouTube
I hope that all the attendees at the June General Meeting ask themselves the same question.
YouTube has evolved from a visual social networking tool to one that can reap enormous benefits to the business environment.
Personally, this type of application would have been very helpful throughout my international marketing career. Numerous hours spent on Telex, telephone and fax communications would have been condensed to useful video exchanges. Imagine, instead of mailing blueprints overseas for discussion and approval, one could transmit a video of the blueprint and of the corresponding model followed by a meaningful video conference.
Would it have reduced my travel schedule? Probably not; but at the very least, my jet-lag tainted overseas meetings upon my arrival would have been simpler and more productive. 

Is there a spy in the house?
Our next General meeting should be classified as a “need to know” topic.
Yes, there is always someone or something looking over our shoulders as we traverse the world of computing. The trick is to know by whom and how to protect ourselves from this continuous spying.
Jim Scheef will be our “M” as he details the miscreants and how we should protect ourselves and our computers.
The name is Scheef; James Scheef!
Be a part of DACS’ secret service and enjoy this captivating presentation with me.
We look forward to seeing you at the next General Meeting; it’s FREE!
Tuesday, July 6, 2010 beginning at 7 p.m. in the Danbury Hospital auditorium.

New and Notable

I began to install the latest Ubuntu 10.4 release in my VirtualBox machine but had to give up due to an interminable amount installation time.
I chose to download on my iMac the trial version of VMware’s Fusion, as an alternative, and ran Ubuntu flawlessly.
Since I would like to run Windows as well on a virtual machine, I am faced with a couple of software choices: VMware Fusion or Nova Development’s Parallels. In either case, I will have to invest a little more than $50 compared to the free VirtualBox application. Since the latter had difficulties installing Ubuntu, I hate to think what it would do when faced with Vista and Windows 7!
According to a recent review and test in Macworld, Parallels is given a slight edge over Fusion.
Of course, I can spend nothing if I install Windows on my partitioned drive and use Apple’s Bootcamp to run the OS.
That wouldn’t be as much fun as playing with a virtual machine and keeping Windows segregated, would it?
Decisions, decisions!