In no particular order, Michael has been a teacher, a programmer, a short-order cook, a postal employee, a Web designer, a multimedia producer, a certified usability analyst, and an assembly line worker. He’s the author or co-author of several books, including The Xcode 2 Book, Airport and Mac Wireless Networks for Dummies, and Teach Yourself VISUALLY iLife 04. He lives in Santa Monica, California, with about a half-dozen working Macs and his wife, the world-renowned Digital Medievalist.

I offer my profoundest thanks to the Digital Medievalist, for her research and sound advice during the composition of this book, to Don Sellers, for his patience in reorganizing the book’s complexly confounded first draft, and, of course, to Tonya Engst, who believed in the face of all evidence to the contrary that this book would actually be finished someday.

Publishers Adam and Tonya Engst have been publishing Mac-related content since they first created their online newsletter, TidBITS, about Macintosh- and Internet-related topics in 1990. TidBITS has been in continuous, weekly production since then. At the TidBITS Web site you can subscribe to TidBITS for free, join in TidBITS Talk discussions, or search many years of news, reviews, and editorial analysis (http://www.tidbits.com/).

Adam and Tonya are known in the Mac world as writers, editors, and speakers. They are also parents to Tristan, who thinks ebooks about clipper ships and castles would be cool.

Link-making AppleScript: Matt Neuburg

List macros: Sharon Zardetto-Aker

Take Control logo: Jeff Tolbert

Editor: Don Sellers

Editor in Chief: Tonya Engst

Publisher: Adam Engst

Thanks to the Sciencenter and the Earth Arts day camps in Ithaca, NY for excellent summer programs, and thanks to Michael and Don for providing the synchronicity for this book to happen.