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By Jim Trageser
San Diego Macintosh Users Group is the largest Mac group in the county, and is affiliated with the San Diego Computer Society (co-sponsor of the California Computer Expo every summer).
The Web site of SDMUG is pretty darn useful. The main page has a well laid out menu that makes it easy to find anything on the group you might be looking for: membership info (including form), meeting times and location (including a map), a page for sub-SIGs of SDMUG (only one of which – the Novice SIG, of all things – has taken advantage of the space), a telnet link to the Tele-Mac BBS (where the group's shareware is available), and a place for SDMUG members to place links to their personal home pages (each as boring as mine!).
At the bottom of each page on the SDMUG site is a basic text menu that allows you to get anywhere from anywhere – meaning you don't have to go back to the main menu to get from meetings to membership.
But the part of the SDMUG site that will keep you coming back again and again is the "Resources" page. There are hundreds of useful links for the Mac user here, from Apple Computer's site itself to other Mac user groups throughout the country to software vendors to magazines like Macworld and MacWEEK to Macintosh newsgroups on the USENET. It would take weeks, months if you're gainfully employeed, to explore all the links SDMUG provides.
If you have a Mac or are just interested in seeing that Bill Gates' oligarchy is opposed, this is a page to bookmark and visit often.
This two-year-old site is dedicated to helping diners find the best places for dinner (and selling ads to make money in the meantime, but that's hardly a bad thing). From the second menu (after hitting the "enter" button), the region is broken down into seven areas: La Jolla/University City, Gaslamp and downtown, North County, Tijuana, South Bay, PB/MB and Old Town/Central Inland. (Which would seem to leave East County out in the cold; are there no good restaurants in Santee?)
Once you choose the region you're looking for, you get to the next menu which lists the restaurants – or at least those that pay to be listed -- in that area, along with their menus, hours, etc. You can also make reservations online via e-mail, although there's a caveat that they can't be guaranteed.
There is a comprehensive list of all restaurants, even those not advertising. It doesn't have comments on them, or other info, though. To get there from the main menu, access the alphabetic listing – that seems worth bookmarking, anyway.
The weakness of this site is that it's not a real restaurant review; it instead has plugs for those restaurants that advertise on the site. Having the menus online is a definite plus, and it's not a bad resource -- it's just not really a total resource for the diner.