Archive for category Hints And Tips
Restore Copy Address Behaviour To Normality In Snow Leopard
Posted by Scott in Hints And Tips on November 16, 2009
You may have noticed that when copying an email address in Mail on Snow Leopard that the default format when you paste it back into another application has changed and now appears as :-
Firstname Surname <firstname@domain.com>
Maximize Windows in OS X Just Like Windows !
Posted by Scott in Hints And Tips, Microsoft, OSX Apps on March 17, 2009
One of the things that many switchers from Windows to Mac find odd is the way in which OS X manages windows when you click on the Red ( Close ) , Amber ( Minimize ) and Green ( Zoom ) buttons. Red and Amber do what you expect but unlike in Windows where the Maximize button expands the window to fill the screen in OS X the Green Zoom button expands the window Apple style…
A quick fix to make switchers feel more at home is to download Right Zoom from BlazingTools.com. This small utility changes the default behavior of the green button to mimic the Windows way of expanding the current window.
Learn To Develop For iPhone With Apps Amuck.com
Posted by Scott in Apple, Featured, Hints And Tips, iPhone on October 13, 2008
Apps Amuck.com is a newly launched web site aimed at budding developers who wish to try their hand at creating their first iPhone app. At present the site has the first 13 of a planned 31 tutorials, each encompassing a downloadable copy of the source code and instructions on building the application and testing within Xcode. Given the enormous amount of hype surrounding the potential income to be made from even the simplest iPhone apps, sites such as AppsAmuck.com are destined to become extremely popular ( and numerous )…
Might even have a go at doing one of my own 
Recognize Playing Music With Tunatic
Posted by Scott in Apple, Featured, Hints And Tips, OSX Apps on October 13, 2008
Most iPhone users are probably familiar with the application Shazam which is available as a free download from the app store. Shazam allows you to identify the name of a music track playing on the TV/Radio or in a club/bar by recording a short segment using your iPhones microphone which it then uploads to the Shazam servers where the track is recognized and the artist and track name displayed back on your iPhone.
Tunatic allows you to do the same thing on your Mac. It is a free download which when run displays a small purple search badge indicating that it is ready to identify a song. By default it will use the in-built microphone on the Mac to record the playing music but this can be changed to the line-input through the application preferences if preferred. Clicking the Search icon will start Tunatic identification and it will record and upload any playing music to the Tunatic servers for identification. Normally within about 30 seconds the Tunatic window will change to display the track name and artist. Recognition in my experience was very good with it only failing to recognize a few more obscure tracks.
Download TV From BBC iPlayer On Your Mac
Posted by Scott in Apple, Entertainment, Headline, Hints And Tips on October 8, 2008
So far the BBC have failed to deliver on their promise to produce an OSX and Linux application for downloading content from their online TV site ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer ), so non-Windows users have to settle for live streaming in a web browser. Whilst this works fine it does mean that you need to have a reasonable broadband link AND be restricted to watching the limited amount of content that is available through the site ( shows are automatically removed after a few days ).
One developer, Paul Battley from London, has come up with a neat solution to this problem though. When the BBC launched the iPlayer for iPhone site they had to provide a way of displaying videos on a device that did not have Adobes Flash Player, and so re-encoded the videos into MP4 files for display on the Jesus Phone. Paul used this site to create a small Ruby script that allows you to download the iPod playable videos and save them to your computer.
How to Clean TFT Screens
Posted by Scott in Featured, Hints And Tips, Mac on October 2, 2008
Heres a quick and simple tip that I can fully recommend. Don’t buy alcohol/chemical based screen cleaning wipes that claim to be designed for laptop or TFT screens. If your screen gets marked from finger prints or splashes from coughs/sneezes I only ever recommend using a clean micro-fibre cloth. You can buy these at any supermarket in the house hold section for less than a couple of pounds and they will last a long time if you keep them clean.
You can use dry for removing settled dust particles but if you have got any other sorts of marks on the screen you will need to VERY lightly dampen with clean water ( a few drops will do, the cloth should not get wet ). Gently buff the area with the damp part of the cloth being careful not to press too hard ( newer iMac owners with glass screens don’t have to worry so much about pressure but I do still recommend the same approach otherwise ).
Twitter Your Currently playing iTunes Track Applescript
Posted by Scott in Hints And Tips, iPod/iTunes on September 12, 2008
Over on What The Lemur W. Thomas Leroux has a small Applescript that will post the currently playing iTunes track to Twitter so your friends and followers can see what you are listening to. All you have to do is cut and paste the code shown into Script Editor and edit in your Twitter username and password then save as an Application and run it. The script loops through every 3 minutes and if the current track is different to the one playing 3 minutes ago it posts a new Tweet, so obviously if your current track is very short it may be missed.
Where do you get your Mac news ?
Posted by Scott in Apple, Hints And Tips, Rumours on September 8, 2008
Mac fans are very well served by rumour sites, technical blogs, hints and tips information and links to new software. Most of these sites provide RSS feeds so if you are looking at keeping up to date with the latest posts a news reader such as NetNewsWire might be the best choice.
But what about when you are not at your own computer and you want a quick fix ? Mac.alltop.com might be just the ticket in this case. Alltop.com provide a range of pages covering all sorts of topics, each page consisting of a selection of the latest posts from the best blogs covering that topic. Mac.alltop.com as the name suggests provides links to news/updates from blogs covering Apple hardware and software.
iPod Touch and iPhone Slow Synching Problem Fixed
Posted by Scott in Headline, Hints And Tips, iPhone, iPod/iTunes on September 4, 2008
Since upgrading to the iPod 2.0 firmware and beginning to install Apps from the App Store synching on my iPod Touch has gotten slower and slower. The performance was so bad I was setting off a sync and going to bed !
There had to be something wrong and looking around the forums I found a number of others reporting similar problems but none of the suggested solutions appeared to work. These ranged from removing all the installed apps, then reinstalling one by one to a range of what appeared to be mumbo jumbo approaches. Suffice to say I either didn’t try them or they didn’t work. Then the other night I noticed one comment in a thread ( which I can’t now recall ) that mentioned USB hubs possibly being at fault.
5 Free Ways To Control Your Kids Access To The Internet
There was a time not too long ago when controlling what your kids got up to on the Internet was easy. There was one family computer linked to the Internet by a slow dialup connection and it was probably located in a communal room, so your teenage son didn’t get much opportunity of surfing the seedier side of the Internet ( at least not when the rest of the family was around ! ).
How times have changed. Now broadband Internet connections, WiFi networks have opened up web access to a huge range of devices from mobile phones through to games consoles and laptops, any of which has the potential to be used for nefarious purposes. Fortunately there are a number of ways in which the average home user can fairly easily block or at least monitor their family use of the Internet, this article will discuss a few of the FREE options that you might want to consider.
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