Macking 19

Q: What the hell is an Intranet? I am seeing this buzzword all over the Help Wanted ads.
A: You have heard of a LAN (Local Area Network)? An office building or entire company linked using Ethernet or AppleTalk, maybe through Novell, so they can share documents, printers and office email? All you have to do is add a Web server filled with HTML files and give everybody a copy of Netscape Navigator. Presto: instant intranet. If you know how to install such a beast and maintain it, there is a high-paying job for YOU in the fab world of Intranets.
You'd better know how to distribute domain addresses and secure firewalls if you are going to do it alone, but many of these companies have people who can do that now. They need someone who knows the Web side. If you have an aptitude for this kind of thing, a year of intense solo study will make you highly employable. All the info is on the Net now; your mission is to find it, organize it in your head and understand it. Then all you will need is a graphic designer to help you make it look good too.

Local or Mail Order?
One strike against mail-order Macs: what do you do when the system arrives and is less than perfect? Suppose you are a beginner and don't know how to best describe the symptoms of your ailing new beast? "It's too slow" is not enough info for that tech on the long-distance phone. Compared to what? Is it slow when running from the internal hard drive? What if you start from an external device with a System Folder that is known to function correctly? Is your speed okay then? Maybe you have a bad internal connection in the IDE link to the motherboard. IDE is cheaper than SCSI and limited to internal hard drives. How can you tell, if this is all new to you and all you want is for your computer to do what you bought it for?
If you buy locally, at least you have a place to schlep it back to where you can show someone what is wrong and have them test for problems. After all, it is under warranty and you don't want to pay $100 to an independent consultant to figure out your problem for you. But if you mail-order then you may have no other choice. You can always send it back (you did save the packing materials, didn't you?), but then you are without it for at least a few days. Apple is good with mail-order fixes for Powerbooks, but Power Computing bends over backwards to make a client happy. Two stories: I have a client who had an original Model 100, at least 6 months out of warranty. He damaged both pairs of SIMM slots improperly installing his own RAM, and he was prepared to pay over $700 to replace the motherboard, but they "discovered" they hadn't registered his warranty for six months after receiving it, so he had "just one day" remaining on his warranty and if he shipped it off to them immediately, they would fix it for free. The second client had a problem with a slow, erratic hard drive that took way too long to boot, crashed at random intervals and wouldn't accept installations from CDs. It took me two hours to absolutely determine the source of the problem since most of the time it seemed to work. Power Computing not only sent him an immediate replacement (of the whole machine) but reimbursed him for my fee!
Now that's how you get repeat business.
Unfortunately, stories like these are contradicted by a letter in a recent MacWeek detailing weeks of problems a customer had in getting his PowerTower fixed or replaced. Bottom line: Ya pays yer money and ya takes yer chances.
It must be hard for those guys; having to contract with local repair outfits in every city (for those buyers needing on-site repair). Sometimes they get a company willing to do component swaps, but which doesn't know anything about Macs. Power Computing had that problem in Portland earlier this year.

There is only so much a phone tech can do when a client doesn't know the correct Mac terminology to describe a problem. When they do find such a person, any tech is in ecstacy because it is such a pleasure working with them.
Learn the terms, folks, it is much easier for everyone if you understand the difference between a file and a folder, a document and an application. Join your local user group and go to the activities. Listen and learn. Accept that a lot will go over your head initially but knowledge grows. We were all newbies at one time or another. Nobody was born an expert in Macdom; a year from now you will seem like an expert to someone in their first month. This should be obvious, but sometimes people need to read it again, especially when they are struggling with a particularly vexing problem.
A few very important terms to tattoo to the inside of your eyelids: Command key, that cloverleaf/apple key next to the space bar -- never call it anything else. Open, as in open a file or a folder. Close a document, window or folder, Quit an application. Select, or single-click on an item, or click and drag over a range of text. What is second nature to the experienced is confusing jargon to the new user. This is extremely important! Get off on the right foot by learning and using the correct terms for all common Mac operations.
Don't overlook the value of a couple of good books to refer to. Start with Robin Williams, an easy name to remember. She has written several books for new users. Must-haves: "The Little Mac Book," The Little System 7 Book," "The Mac Is Not A Typewriter," and an all-around good technical dictionary, "Jargon." Any of these (especially "Jargon") would make a good bathroom reader. Just pick it up anywhere for a good read, or follow sequentially for a tutorial experience. She has also written an excellent manual on PageMaker, and another on page layout for people without a background in graphic design.

stephen.d.roe@bangate1.tek.com writes,
I just finished reading, with great interest, this month's 'Macking it' column. I was curious about your choice to go with SpiritOne as an ISP. My personal ISP is also Teleport, and I too am looking for a change. Since you are very pro-Mac, I was suprised that you weren't advising the use of a Mac-specific ISP like Imagina/Zephyr, or MacConnection. Could you give me the benefit of your reasoning on this? ...when I switch providers I want to be able to stay with one outfit for a while.
I picked them because they supply PMUG with feed for the Electric Sheep, and other people I knew spoke well of them. I later learned that they offer very few CGI scripts, don't support shtml and have no web counters that I can incorporate into my pages. I have been talking with them about adding the latter; most web designers do not need anything more than counter, mailto and image map capability; there are security problems when one fills the server with all manner of CGI scripts without careful evaluation of each one. I also have an account on Imagina/Z and will be examining them very closely as well. I didn't need the advantages offered by a national provider like MacConnection, but if I did that's where I would be. I can safely recommend Imagina or SpiritOne to any of my clients, or any new user getting online for the first time.
At this stage of development, Mac servers cannot handle the level of simultaneous traffic that UNIX servers can. The MacOS kernel does not yet support true multitasking (but the BeOS does) and to a business user who is encouraging as many people to hit their web pages as possible, that is important. Of course this situation is temporary; effective Mac solutions for ISPs are being released regularly.

These tidbits are from MacWay:
Stephen Wonfor writes: "A friend came to me in a panic with two PC disks that contain the software for AMCASE [Association of American Medical Colleges] medical school applications. He had tried to run the setup software [there was a need to decompress .zip files and the app itself] but it crashed on three different PC's he tried it on. Mac to the rescue - I was able to decompress the files using Stuffit Deluxe, move them into a folder that I had configured to be a Soft Windows floppy drive, run the AMCASE software from Windows 3.11 in Soft Windows, and finally copy the results files onto a disk formatted for PC's by my Power Mac. He was able to complete his med school application by the deadline without the need to handle a PC even though the final results had to come from a PC. Mac has its rewards."
luism@geocities.com (Ricky) writes: "I thought I might tell you of a new Mac E-zine that is starting up. It's called MacNow Magazine, and is totally 100% non-profit.
"MacNow offers its News page, which is updated daily and contains Mac News from around the web. Another, which is not fully set up yet, is on-line tech support on IRC (Internet Relay Chatting). MacNow will release more details about this later. The magazine will go up around the 22nd of December, containing many useful and interesting articles from "Upgrading your Mac" to reviews of different Macintosh internet sites. It will be available on the web and in Doc-Maker Format. We will be offering subscriptions to it in the future (the docmaker format). I hope you look at our magazine at http://www.digisys.net/users/bertsch/macnow/. I'm sure you will like its layout."

SupremeEd@aol.com writes: "MacSupreme is a new Macintosh e-zine (electronic magazine). It focuses on news, and product reviews for the user. It is currently non-profit, but may be a profitable product by the end of 1997. Subscriptions are free, and so is advertising. MacSupreme also provides a free supplement to subscribers called 'The Monthly Mac.'
"MacSupreme is published by MacSupreme Communications, and is owned by Nesa Corporation. You can send email to the editor at SupremeEd@aol.com, or about MacSupreme overall to MacSuprme@aol.com. Our web site is http://members.aol.com/macsuprme."

tjh@ic.net (Tom Hopper) writes: "I'd like to announce the official opening of my new Mac software site. The name of the page is 'Little-Known Titles.' I've seen so many people asking 'well, I can do this on Windows; can you do it on that Mac?' that I decided to answer. This site is the result. I've collected all such questions I've seen (many of them on the EvangeList) and tried to provide one or two software titles that get the job done. This site is proof that while there may be more _titles_ for Windows/DOS, the Mac fulfills all the same computing needs.
"Some of the catagories include: theatre; business; geneology; education; science; and networking. I have twelve catagories total, plus a page with links to many other excellent resources, including the Evangelist Web site and several of Apple's sites. These pages aren't supposed to be a comprehensive list, of course; I don't intend to compete with Apple's Hardware and Software Guide. I'm working to create a reference for only those categories where titles can be hard to find.
"You'll find the "Little-Known Titles" pages at http://ic.net/~tjh/mac/unusual-frames.html. As the URL implies, I've designed them with frames in mind, but all the content should be accessible from all browsers. The pages just look better--and are easier to navigate--in a frames-capable browser."

Extensis Corp, a Portland company that has a string of excellent utilities and enhancements for users of XPress, PageMaker and Photoshop (among others) is now offerinc a public beta of CyberViewer, an enhancement for Netscape Navigator 2.0 or later that adds new tools (as opposed to more traditional plug-ins) to the application. I just got this application and it looks k00l! Quoting from their press release:
"CyberViewer is a Macintosh-only freeware system extension that works with Netscape 2.0 and above running on System 7.5 or greater. It adds a floating palette to Netscape which displays each page you have visited as a graphical thumbnail. CyberViewer can be toggled to display your history in a text view as well. It also improves upon Netscape's history window by remembering pages between Netscape sessions and recording pages you visited even if you back up.
"CyberViewer thumbnails can be dragged to your Netscape bookmark window to add them to your URL list. They can also be dragged to the desktop to create double-clickable URL files which launch Netscape and load the selected page. CyberViewer can play a system sound to notify you when a page has completed loading (particularly useful when you have multiple browser windows open or have slow Internet access).
"For more information and to download the software, please visit the CyberViewer home page ."

No Microsoft products were used in the production of this column.

email mp at moonmac dot com. (I took out the mailto link because that's how the spammers find me.)