Posts Tagged 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>
iPhoto 09 Now Works from External Drives and Network Shares
Tidbits.com has a report on the 10 new features that appeared in the latest update to iPhoto 09 ( xx ) that Apple neglected to advertise. One of the new additions that is particularly interesting to me and many others with more than one Mac, is the ability to open iPhoto libraries from external drives or network drives. This works for any logged on user not just the person who created the library.
This is a real benefit and means I can now maintain a single library on the network and a backup on a removable drive. Not sure as yet what the performance will be like and it may be that it is not really practical to use a shared network drive for this ( on 100Mb network anyway ). I will have a go and report back on my findings later, meanwhile if you had already spotted this and have tried it out I would be interested to hear how you got on.
Tethering Laptop to iPhone 3.0 Cracked ?
Has Joachim Bean really found a way of tethering an iPhone ? Check out his article here. Would love to know if this works, please post comments
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.
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 ).