Dorchester — Sep 8th 2009
David Moon started with a series of helpful 'odds and ends'. These ranged from the keyboard shortcuts and function keys, which all do wonderful things, if only we could remember them, to free browser add-ons such as Xmarks, which holds bookmarks and passwords which can then be used on different browsers and computers.
Euan then took up the reins with a learned discourse on Snow Leopard, which explained that if wonderful things were not immediately apparent to those who had paid their £25 to buy it (apart from much improved speed, large amounts of space appearing on hard drives, and enormous icons), they would soon be so, as software developers began to exploit its features. Phrases such as 'Grand Central Exchange', and 'Parallel Processing' - with accompanying equations, were bandied about, and convinced the punters that their money had been well spent - even though they might not precisely understand why, and that Snow Leopard was definitely a Good Thing.
After a break for refreshment, David Martin then demonstrated his 'Color Munki' meter and software, which is used to calibrate the computer screen and output device (printer or projector) such that the displays are exactly matched in terms of colour rendering. Not having a printer available, we were unable to actually demonstrate this, but we were impressed to see the system in operation, and could appreciate the benefits of having this task automated in this way.
Finally, Steve demonstrated the Dorset Explorer website. Unfortunately, the O2 dongle which we had seen as enabling the WWW to be accessed at our meetings failed to come up with the goods, and so previously captured images had to be relied upon. These demonstrated the versatility of the website, with various mapping layers enabling customised views to be captured, and information about selected features extracted from each.
SR
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