Macintosh User Group (MUG) news clearinghouse The MUG Center has posted a list of dates for Microsoft’s Office:Mac 2004 tour, which will take it to user groups from San Diego to Boston. Microsoft employee Gary Wilson and members of his team from the Macintosh Business Unit will show off the software’s new features, including Office Project Center, Excel Page Layout View and the Office Compatibility Report. The tour kicks off Wednesday, April 7 at the San Diego MUG; visit the MUG Center for all the dates as well as links to the MUGs hosting the presentation.
In other news, the Princeton Student Macintosh Users Group recently announced GarageBandFest ’04. The contest is open to all Princeton University students, faculty and staff. It invites them to create and submit original compositions created with GarageBand. PSMUG will give away a pair of 15GB iPods, iTunes gift certificates and more. They’ve also opened the contest to non-Mac users by making iMacs loaded with GarageBand available in a cluster on campus. GarageBandFest ’04 is already underway and will end on April 18.
Saturday, April 24 is Macintosh User Group Day, as declared by publisher O’Reilly & Associates and The North Coast Macintosh Users Group. An event will be held from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m. on O’Reilly’s campus in Sebastopol, Calif. You can expect presentations by authors Derrick Story (“Digital Photography Pocket Guide, 2nd Edition,” “iPhoto 2: The Missing Manual”), Chris Stone (“Mac OS X Panther in a Nutshell”), Tom Negrino and Dori Smith (“Mac OS X Unwired”) and Scott Fullam (“Hardware Hacking Projects for Geeks”). Directions are on the MUG Day Web page.
Macworld Conference & Expo Boston is still over three months away, but the MUG Center also has news about savings for user group members. Until May 7, you can register for a free exhibit hall pass or take 15 percent off all conference packages. You’ll need your User Group Priority Code, which has been e-mailed to all Apple-recognized user group leaders. The trade show happens July 12 to 15 at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center.
Elsewhere on the Web, the April issue of “The First Coast Mac,” the monthly newsletter distributed by North Florida MUG, is now available for download as a PDF from the group’s Web site. It features tips for sharing files with your iDisk, a review of the O’Reilly book Adobe Photoshop CS One-on-One, Christopher Breen’s latest Mac 911 Help Desk and MacCentral Senior Editor Peter Cohen’s recent article “Macs and viruses — are we as safe as we think?”