The June NEAOC meeting will feature an iChat with The Macintosh iLIfe ’09 author Jim Heid, live and direct from sunny California. If you are unfamiliar with Jim, here’s a little bit about him.

Jim Heid describes himself as a poster child for iLife: he has been taking photos, making movies, and playing music since he was a kid. He began writing about personal computers in 1980, when he computerized his home-built ham radio station with a Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I.

As Senior Technical Editor of one of the first computer magazines, Kilobaud Microcomputing, he began working with Mac prototypes in 1983. He began writing for Macworld magazine in 1984 and has been a Senior Contributor ever since. He has also written for PC World, Internet World, and Newsweek magazines, and wrote a weekly, nationally syndicated technology column for the Los Angeles Times.

Jim also does consulting for Apple on iLife-related topics. He has developed the iLife training materials for the 2008 and 2009 Apple Camp workshops that are held in Apple retail stores around the world and also wrote the scripts for the iLife video tutorials available at apple.com/ilife/tutorials. He is also a frequent speaker at user groups, conferences, and other events. He has taught at the Kodak Center for Creative Imaging in Camden, Maine, at the University of Hawaii, and at dozens of technology conferences in between.

Jim and his standard poodle and mascot, Sophie, divide their time between San Francisco and the rugged coast of Mendocino, California.

In addition to Jim at the June meeting, Dave Popeck will give us a look at BackJack, the online Macintosh backup service. To wrap things up, we’ll have our always informative Question & Answer session.

Hope to see you all at the June meeting, and mark your calendars in advance for July 25, 2009. That’s the date of our annual picnic, details to be forthcoming soon.