Join Us in Shelburne, VT on Sunday!

Way back when, the go-to word processor for me was ClarisWorks. In grade school I mastered its simple interface. I was able to make pamphlets and donation sheets for scouting bike-a-thons, keep team statistics for my youth hockey team in a spreadsheet and type out all of my homework. In a time before America Online, these would all print out of an original StyleWriter.

Over the years I’ve transferred this time capsule of my childhood from double-density floppies, to high-density floppies, to zip disks, to jaz disks, to burned CDs, to external hard drives, and one day I finally consolidated all of it and emailed it all to myself using Gmail for relative perpetuity.

Eventually, ClarisWorks became AppleWorks when Apple bought Claris. AppleWorks functions under Snow Leopard but not under Lion, so if you upgrade you’ll need to give it up. However, the documents all remain accessible in Pages under Lion.

I’m not really sad that AppleWorks is dead, unlike so many customers who’ve written in with similar nostalgia or, sometimes, panic; I’m just glad the documents are all still viable. There are way too many of them, but one of these days I expect they’ll all need to be converted to PDF, or whatever format seems to have the longest expected lifespan in a few years or so.

Things are similarly simple for those of us who used early Microsoft Office programs. Office 2011 will effortlessly open these ancient files, but don’t expect them to look perfect (not that the old Apple and ClarisWorks files always come out perfectly either).

What digital data do you value, and hope to access far into the future? What safeguards do you have to ensure its safety? I’d love to hear your thoughts!

It’s Jan filling in for Don again as he and Grace wind down their vacation. As I write, they’re in Switzerland motorcycling their way through the Alps. Several of the folks here at Small Dog have motorcycles, and I am already hearing the chatter about getting some good last rides in before the snow flies. Hopefully, they can ride up until December!

I thought a good subject to write about this week is Small Dog’s involvement within the communities we serve. Year after year, Small Dog is recognized by local and national organizations for being a socially responsible and caring corporate partner.

We contribute thousands of dollars to charitable causes either by directly matching customer contributions through our Charitable Contribution program or by in-kind donations. Our employees also donate their time to local efforts, through various community service initiatives.

We believe that it is imperative to strengthen the bonds within our community, and to facilitate a strong network of individuals and businesses. Read more about our community efforts below.

Our FREE eWaste Recycling Events are back, and it’s easier than ever to participate. Check out the list of “*acceptable materials*”:http://www.smalldog.com/ewaste at our website before you load up, head on over and watch as the staff from WeRecycle unloads your vehicle.

*Vermont event:* Saturday, September 24th from 9AM to 2PM at Ben & Jerry’s headquarters in S. Burlington.
*New Hampshire event:* Saturday, October 8th from 9AM to 2PM in Manchester, NH at the Mall of New Hampshire’s food court parking lot.

Our partners at “*WeRecycle*”:http://www.werecycle.com are fast and professional and they pledge to safely and responsibly recycle all materials collected, while securely destroying all electronic data. They insure that any harmful chemicals such as cadmium, chromium and mercury are kept out of landfills so they do not leach into the soil and contaminate our groundwater.

For more information our *Vermont eWaste event,* “*click here.*”:http://www.smalldog.com/ewastevt
For more information our *New Hampshire eWaste event,* “*click here.*”:http://www.smalldog.com/ewastenh

A great example of our community outreach efforts was our recent donation of four MacBooks to Girls Inc. of New Hampshire, an affiliate of the national Girls, Inc. organization. Girls, Inc. is a nonprofit organization that responds to the changing needs of girls and their communities by utilizing advocacy and research based programs specifically designed to empower girls to reach their full potential and to understand, value, and assert their rights.

I had the pleasure of presenting the computers to the staff at the Manchester, NH center, where over 50 joyous young girls were learning, playing games, and having fun. The addition of MacBooks to their computer lab was met with elation, seeing how they only had a handful of PCs!

When I booted up the laptops and got Photo Booth running, the faces on these little girls lit up. It was like Christmas morning! These laptops will provide a great resource to help these bright young girls develop into inquisitive, confident and intelligent women. Small Dog was thrilled to be able to support Girls Inc. with this donation.

__Originally featured in__ “*Kibbles & Bytes issue #662*”:http://blog.smalldog.com/kibbles/kb662/

Pages is one of those apps that really filled a void in my world. Word was slow and cumbersome (and pre-version 2008 for Mac, not very pretty) and AppleWorks never transitioned into the vibrant OS X “Cocoa”:http://developer.apple.com/technologies/mac/cocoa.html world.

While I know the application pretty darn well by this point, I’m always excited when I learn something new. *Case in point: the automatically-populating Table of Contents feature.*

If you’re writing a paper that needs a Table of Contents, there’s no reason to do it manually. When done correctly, the TOC will display your Heading styles and apply a page number to them, and then update on the fly while you’re making changes. If you haven’t used it before, you should–but there are some initially perplexing things about the formatting, so here are some tips:

* Heading styles are found in the *Styles Drawer,* the window that appears to the right or left of the document you’re working on. (Note: if you don’t see it, click the View icon at the top of your document and select Show Styles Drawer.)

* Each page of your document should be its own Section; select *Section Break* in the Insert menu to break out each page.

* Once you have broken out your pages into Sections, your TOC should show each *Heading* (Heading 1, Heading 2, etc.) with an assigned page.

* To edit what is shown in the TOC, click on the *Documents section* of the Inspector, and select TOC. There, you can check or uncheck any number of options to show.

* The individual Section preferences are found in the *Layout section* of the Inspector. This is where you can designate your pagination.

* You can control your pagination by selecting either *”Continue from previous section”* or *”Start at: [put your page number here]”* under Section in the Layout part of the Inspector.

* *Important:* If you want to have your document start at ‘1’ __after__ the TOC, you need to select “Continue…” on both the cover page (if you have one) and the TOC and select “Start at: 1” on the first actual page of your document.

* The font, font size, line spacing, etc. are all editable in the TOC using the *Text section* of the Inspector. And even though they are linked, you can make your page numbers a different size than the rest of the text in the TOC.

Anyone else out there a Pages fangirl or fanboy? “Send us your comments!”:mailto:kali@smalldog.com

Usually, one might try to avoid that at all costs, but these DODO cases are seriously cool. Need to become “one” with your technology? Well, this case can’t show you how to download an app, but it can help make your iPad feel more “like you.”

Straight from the DODO’s mouth:
__”One of the things our customers always tell us about the DODOcase is that it somehow transforms their iPad from an impersonal piece of aluminum to something comfortable, almost familiar.”__

This week, *save $5 off the DODOcase Book Back for iPad 2.*