A volunteer organization supporting Palm OS enthusiasts in the Nashville metro area since 1999.
December 2005 Archives
Scott MacHaffie Interview Archive Posted
If you haven’t downloaded it already, the mp3 archive/podcast for December 15th’s Computer Outlook radio show has been posted. You can find it at this URL. For December’s show, we interviewed Scott MacHaffie who wrote the book Palm and Treo Hacks : Tips & Tools for Mastering Your Handheld
I hope to write a full review of the book, but until then I can sum up the book thusly - it’s like having a Palm User Group in your hand. Every tip, or trick that we’ve ever given at the Nashville PUG meeting is covered in this book and more.
I thought the show was pretty good, but allow me apologize in advance for talking all over John’s attempt to go to break. With the new conferencing system he’s using, it’s VERY hard to hear him due to an abundance of slap back echo. If I were to stop every time I heard something odd, I’d never get more than three words out at a time, because I would be pausing to see if what I was hearing was me, or someone else speaking. It’s very frustrating and it was because of this slap back issue that I didn’t hear John trying to interrupt me to go to break. Sorry about that.
Anyway, I hope you enjoy the interview and you can find the show notes at this link.
December 28, 2005 @ 02:47 PM | TrackBack (0)
Scott MacHaffie Tonight On Computer Outlook
Tonight’s guest will be Scott MacHaffie, the author of Palm and Treo Hacks
December 15, 2005 @ 02:41 AM | TrackBack (0)
Voice Your Opinion On Where NPUG Should Meet
The Nashville Palm Users Group enjoyed over 5 years of meetings at First Data Systems, but alas all good things must come to an end. So we’ve been on the hunt to find a new home and we think we’ve narrowed it down to a few choice locations. From all of our investigations, it would appear that the Nashville Public Library system offers the best locations in which to meet. Now it’s up to you!
On the right side of our home page you should see a section called “Monthly Poll” Please place your vote on which library location you would prefer to meet. Based on this poll, we will make that location our new “home” if you will. To help you make your decision, listed below are details regarding the library system as a whole and the specifics of your location choices.
Why The Library?
One of the things that we’ve always wanted to do, is to be able to branch out and move the meeting to a new location for one month. Our hope is that we could make it easier for some people to attend for a given month and shake things up a bit. That’s a daunting logistical task, but with the Nashville Library system, it’s much easier. In 2006, we plan to have two “On The Road” meetings. One in Franklin and one in Madison, or Goodlettsville.
In addition, the locations we’ve chosen all have high speed wireless Internet access (WiFi), will allow us to bring in coffee and doughnuts, and have enough space capable of housing our group. For a map of all the Nashville & Davidson County libraries, please select this link.
Green Hills Branch Library
Green Hills is one of the nicest branch libraries having recently undergone a renovation a few years ago. This branch has a 100 seat meeting space, so there’s plenty of room for our group and they seem quite accommodating. Green Hills is also somewhat central to Greater Nashville, although it is not immediately next to a major Interstate. It should be noted that the Green Hills library has plenty of parking.
Edmondson Pike Branch Library
Should the membership choose the Edmondson Pike Branch, we would be returning to our roots, since our first meetings were held in the “Nipper’s Corner” area. This location is a bit far south, but is easily accessible from either I-24, or I-65. Edmondson Pike Branch is a new library and has only been open for a few years. They offer two large meeting rooms and plenty of parking.
Nashville Public Library (Main) - Downtown
The Nashville Public Library (Main) is definitely one of the preeminent libraries in Nashville, if not in the Nation. It is centrally located downtown and there is a large parking garage, so there is plenty of parking, however it is not free.
Parking Pricing
According to Beth Brown, at the Downtown Nashville Public Library, the cost for parking is as follows: Meters are free ALL DAY Sat. and Sun. As for parking in the garage, the first hour is free, the 2nd hour is $1.50 and it’s $1 per half-hour after that.
Given that our meetings are two hours in length and tend to run over, you can expect to pay roughly $3.50 per meeting for parking, unless you can find a meter where you can park for free. Granted, that isn’t a lot of money, but parking downtown may be a bit of a hurdle - a hurdle that you don’t have to overcome at the branch locations.
But What If I Don’t Like ANY Of The Locations?
Well, that’s what the last item “I Want A Recount!” is for. Simply make that your choice and then please put in your suggestion as a reply to this post. Your suggestions do not have to be limited to library locations, so if you know of a place where you think we could meet that is better than what we’ve come up with, make your voice heard. 
We’re going to leave the post running for most of the month, but we plan to have a location nailed down by the end of the week. So the sooner you can vote the better.
December 13, 2005 @ 01:38 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
All Meeting Presentations Have Been Posted
Since early 2004, we’ve been showing MS PowerPoint presentations at our meetings. The presentations act as outlines and guides during the meeting and as of this evening - show notes. We have converted all past presentations into PDF documents and attached them to all past meeting pages. For example, if you scroll down to the bottom of the page for last week’s meeting you’ll see a “presentation block” with the file that you can download.
To view the presentations, you will need Adobe Acrobat on your computer, which you can download for free at this link, or if you’d like to view them on your Palm OS device, MetaViewSoft have created a free Palm OS based solution called PalmPDF.
After the first of the year, we hope to have audio files from our meetings posted as well. Those take a great deal longer to put together, as you might imagine, but it’s in the works.
In the meantime, we hope that you enjoy the meeting presentations and if you run into any difficulty, or problems, please let us know by posting a reply to this news item.
December 13, 2005 @ 12:53 AM | TrackBack (0)
Different Location This Saturday
Just a reminder that this month’s meeting is NOT at it’s usual location. Instead we’re being hosted by the fine folks at Vineyard Christian Fellowship. Below is the address and a link to a Google Map so that you can find us. If you get lost, feel free to call me on my mobile phone at 615-781-6827 and we’ll guide you in.
Vineyard Christian Fellowship
1400 Donelson Pike #A3
Nashville, TN
Select this link for a Google Map!
December 09, 2005 @ 09:21 PM | TrackBack (0)
Rebuilding The News
We’re going a different way with how we manage and post the news to the web site. This is going to entail re-posting the news from the Discussion Forums into MovableType and it’s going to take some time.
Why am I telling you this? Well, because right now things aren’t working exactly right with the news, so if you find broken links, or things just looking off, you now know why.
I’ll be fixing things this evening, but for the present moment, things will just be a little off. More later…
December 08, 2005 @ 04:21 PM | TrackBack (0)
Front Page News Is Currently Only Listing Titles
Yesterday we upgraded to the latest version of our forum software. As with any major upgrade, there are a few kinks to work out and the kink I’m focusing on right now is the Front Page News.
Currently, I am only able to display the titles of new news entries and not the entire post. It’s a minor obstacle, but I just wanted to let everyone know that we’re working on it and should have a resolution sometime later today.
Until then, feel free to browse the forums and play with all the new tools and toys incorporated with this new version of vBulletin!
December 08, 2005 @ 09:50 AM | TrackBack (0)
NPUG Gets A Face Lift
If the web site looks a little bit different, have no fear! We’ve simply updated most of the site to our new design. The only section of the site that doesn’t have the new design is the Discussion Forums and we’ll be getting that fixed in the near future.
Belive it or not, we’ve been working on the redesign for over a year. That’s right, it’s taken us over a year to get to this point. I’m so sorry that it’s taken so long, but if things keep pace, we should be pretty close to done by our next meeting. It’s been a long hard road to get here, but we’re in the home stretch!
If you see anything weird, or not working properly - other than the fact that the forums don’t match - please post a comment to this news entry.
Thank you for your patience!
December 06, 2005 @ 10:19 PM
Michael Mace Interview Archive Posted
The archive of the interview I did with Michael Mace for the Computer Outlook Radio Show has been posted at this link. I have to say that not only was it an honor to interview Mr. Mace again, it was also one of the best shows we’ve ever done. Really good stuff!
If you’d like to see the show notes for this show, you can find them at this link.