DailyMacTip.com

#111 - Migration wizard

2008-12-24T11:38:00.004+01:00

I get this question quite often: "How do I get my files from my old mac to my new one? I already booted my new one and didn't use the migration wizard, what now?"

Well, in short, you can start the migration wizard manually. It resides in the Tools subfolder of your Applications folder.

Now go find a firewire cable and hold that 't'.

Good luck

#110 - warning

2008-12-23T23:40:00.006+01:00

I've talked about backing up your mac using different tools in the past, but what's equally important as a backup is the ability to restore it.

In the past I used to boot 1 machine normally and boot the one I wanted to restore in Target Disk Mode by holding the 'T' whilst booting. That way, the second machine would function as any external harddrive, which can then be accessed from the first Mac. I would then restore an image I created earlier using carbon copy cloner or something just like it.

Recently I had to buy a few of the new MacBooks. The nice unibody with black keys and glossy glass screen are gorgeous IMHO, but the lack of a FireWire port is definitely a problem. For one the lack of FW also means there's no Target Disk Mode. (I don't know why they can't implement it using USB, if you do, please enlighten me).
No Target Disk Mode unfortunately also means there is no easy way to re-image these machines the way I'm used to.

So, this is what you need to do:
You need to create a bootable external USB-drive (very cheap these days), boot from that on the MacBook by holding the 'Option'-key and selecting the bootdisk on screen, then restore from an image or from the external drive itself. (I prefer creating extra images on the USB-drive so I can always fall back to some known-good-state, or re-image a machine for different purposes/users quickly and easily)

It's cheaper than requiring 2 macs, but it wasn't something I expected, so I got caught once. Hope you can avoid it after having read this.

#109 - Disk Inventory

2008-09-24T10:19:00.009+02:00

We've al got too much junk on our drives and run out of space all the time. So, once in a while you may need to clean up some of that junk. If you want to find a good place to start, try Disk Inventory X, this little app will analyze your disk so you can easily find the culprit that is taking up all that precious hard drive real estate.

Like most of the tips on this site, this is a free utility, so don't waste time (or space) and go download!

#108 - Free virtualisation

2008-03-13T14:46:00.004+01:00

Everybody has his mouth full of virtualisation these days. I must admit Parallels and VMWare Fusion are great products if you want to run another OS on your mac without the trouble of partitioning your drive.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with both of these, on the contrary, but why don't you try a free open source alternative?

There are several options, but I prefer Virtualbox because it has almost exactly the same features as the paid software packages, only for free, so give it a spin.

#107 - GrabFS

2008-01-03T21:57:00.000+01:00

A followup from the last tip:

Hackszine does a story on GrabFS a MacFUSE filesystem that gives you screenshots of all running applications.

Leopard only.

#106 - screengrabs from DVD player

2007-12-31T00:58:00.000+01:00

The grab utility won't make screenshots when you're playing back a DVD. Until I found this hack I used VLC to playback the DVD and make my grab (it works, but it's not very handy).

So I found this on the Random Tech blog through Digg.com:

How to make a screengrab of DVD Player

In short:
- open terminal and type:
screencapture -i ~/Desktop/dvd.png
- press space and select the DVD player window
Done

It seems the quality is not really the same (it wasn't the same in my tests anyway), but I guess a lot can be fixed in Photoshop or the likes.

Ow and before I forget: you'll also need to trim the edges of the window...

Happy New Year to all of you!

#105 - Improve your stacks

2007-11-14T10:00:00.000+01:00

Seems like everyone these days is trying to improve the Leopard GUI. I found this great idea via del.icio.us.

Simple + elegant = brilliant.

Finally stacks make sense.

#104 - Front Row

2007-11-05T09:53:00.000+01:00

Ever wonder how to launch Front Row without the remote?

Press Command-Escape and voila, it's there. Of course you can change the keyboard shortcut in the preferences pane.

#103 - Get rid of the 3D Dock in Leopard

2007-10-31T09:49:00.000+01:00

Wired points you to the right places on how to tweak the Leopard dock

#102 - reorganize you menu bar icons

2007-09-23T14:23:00.001+02:00

Did you know that you can change the order of your menu bar icons?
Just press and hold the command key and then drag your icons in the order you want them...

While you are waiting...

2007-08-22T10:32:00.000+02:00

As I said on monday, I've reached my personal goal of 101 mac tips and tricks. I'm now starting a different project, which will be taking up most of my time in the next few months, naturally the updates here will be slowing down.

So while you're waiting for a next tip to be posted maybe you can read the archive or enjoy some of the crap I found floating around on the interwebitubes

#101 - GSync

2007-08-21T16:00:00.000+02:00

Those that know me know that I'm a huge fan of all Google products. That's why I wanted to pint you to this synchronisation tool: GSync

I was always frustrated at the fact that I could subscribe to my Google Calendars in iCal, but that I couldn't make changes in iCal that sync'd back to my Google Calendar. This tool is exactly what I was looking for. It's still very early, but you may want to try it out for yourself.

#100 - Google Notifier

2007-08-20T15:15:00.001+02:00

Google Notifier is a free tool that checks your Google mail and calendar for you. It shows up in the menu bar and gives you a quick view of the number of mails and/or events waiting for you. Get it here.

WOW!

2007-08-20T15:09:00.000+02:00

We reached number 100! This is a milestone for me.

My personal goal was to reach 101. This means that as of tomorrow, I will be a happy man. Although I will be posting more tips in the future, they won't come daily anymore. I will be concentrating on another very challenging project in the meantime and when that's finished you'll read all about it here.

As I said, I'll still be posting tips once in a while, just not on a daily basis anymore. Maybe you can read through the archives, post some comments or maybe even leave a tip yourself as a comment.

I hope you enjoyed this journey as much as I did.

Regards,
D.

#099 - transparant dock

2007-08-10T11:10:00.000+02:00

If you want to just slightly enhance the look of your desktop try Cleardock. Cleardock does exactly what it says, it makes the background of your dock transparent. You can also use it to give that background a coulour of your choosing if you prefer. It's a free download so feel free to give it a try, but as always when messing with your system: make sure you back up first!

P.S.: You need to reboot for Cleardock to work.

#098 - iMovie 6 for free

2007-08-09T09:19:00.000+02:00

Apple just released iLife '08 yesterday. Lots of changes - as usual. Especially iMovie. iMovie 8 is a completey new application. Not an update, a complete rewrite.

Some people however miss some of the features that were available in the "old" iMovie 6 HD, especially related to audio tracks.

If you had iLife '06 before, iMovie 6 HD will still be on your harddrive somewhere. If it's not (either because you removed it, or you only had an older version of iLife before) you can now get iMovie HD 6 for free on the apple website. This offer is only valid for those people that already own iLife '08, which at 79$ is a steal IMO.

#097 - GPS

2007-08-08T13:52:00.000+02:00

If you want to use your laptop to find your way around, go check out RouteBuddy. It's compatible with lots of GPS devices (check here to see which ones). You can buy maps of almost every country in the world on disk or as a download (mind you, the files are huge). A trial version is available, so give it a go.

#096 - today's event

2007-08-07T18:12:00.000+02:00

Apple will be announcing some new mac-related stuff today. You can follow the event online here and here. It's always a good idea to follow these events (or at least look at the Apple site when the event is over), you may even wish to hold off any purchases if you know of an upcoming event.

#095 - trackpad & scrolling

2007-08-06T10:00:00.000+02:00

I've taken last week off, but I'm here today to tell you about iscroll2.

iscroll2 is a replacement trackpad driver for older apple laptop models like the powerbook and ibook G4 that do net yet support 2-finger scrolling. It's freeware and works just great, although it's only version 0.28. Of course as with all software drivers your mileage may vary and I urge you to back up before installing.

Anyway, it works fine for me although it did take some tweaking of the settings in the preferences pane. Scroll speed was way too fast to be usable, but with lots of parameters to change, I'm sure you can make it work just like you want it to.

#094 - software updates

2007-07-27T15:16:00.000+02:00

Normally, your system will be set by default to check for updates once a week. This feature will connect to Apple and look for updates to the Apple software that's installed on your system. (of course it doesn't work for 3rd party applications you installed)

The updates normally consist of updates to the OS, iLife, Quicktime, bugfixes, Security updates etc. If you're on a brand new system, get these updates immediately. (Don't panic if the system restarts twice after an OS update)
If your system isn't new, but has some software installed, some of your documents etc are on there, you should make sure you have backups before you begin updating.

If you're system isn't set to check for updates automatically, you can do it yourself by clicking on the apple-menu (top-left) and just choosing "Software update".

What's really important though is that you shouldn't blindly update everything as it comes up.

For instance: if you update Quicktime from version 6 PRO to 7 you need to re-register Quicktime 7 to get the Pro-functionality, which will cost you a little money.

Another example: if you heavily rely on Java-based applications, you may wish to not update Java. I've been in situations where after a Java update these apps stopped working completely. I couldn't even re-download them and run them, they just wouldn't respond. Sometimes you can solve this by switching which Java version to use in the Java preferences, but make sure this will work for you before updating.

I can't stress enough how important backups are, so go back and read my tips on backups before it's too late.

#093 - Google SketchUP

2007-07-26T12:22:00.000+02:00

SketchUp is a free 3D modelling tool. What makes it so special is it's easy of use and it's ability to put import your models into Google Earth. So start modeling your house today and show it to the world!

#092 - CoRD

2007-07-25T10:40:00.000+02:00

Another tool for remote controlling your windows machines from your mac. Open source this time. CoRD allows multiple connections in one window (with easy switching) (or use multiple windows if you prefer) and it has automatic clipboard synchronisation.

It's still only version 0.4 but give it a go, it's free...

#091 - Remotely controlling Windows Machines with RDP

2007-07-24T09:51:00.000+02:00

Microsoft has provided us with a Remote Desktop client for the Mac that allows you to take control of Windows machines running RDP. It's easy to use: just enter the IP or Machine name, enter your logon credentials and presto! your in. You can get it HERE for free.

#090 - Silence please

2007-07-23T10:35:00.000+02:00

Another cool thingy I found via Lifehacker.com:

This time it's a preference pane that allows you to set the volume of your Mac's startup sound. You know, that loud boing-sound you hear when the mac boots... Well, finally there's something that can be done about it. Get your copy here. It's still Beta software, so be cautious...

#089 - trim the fat

2007-07-19T10:41:00.000+02:00

trimthefat is a free tool that - like Xslimmer - allows you to strip universal binaries from the parts you don't need. A universal binary holds 2 versions of the program, 1 for the PowerPC platform, another for the Intel platform. Since you only use one, the idea is that you can save disk space by removing the other.

Trimthefat worked fine on my system even though it's still only version 0.7 at the moment. I was a bit disappointed at the amount of disk space gained, but that of course all depends on the applications you use.

The developer's webpage has a lot of free software available and I will be talking about other tools he made in the near future.

#088 - Color Labels

2007-07-18T15:02:00.000+02:00

The Mac OS has always allowed you to label files and folders in a number of colors. This may not seem very useful at first, but there are some practical uses.

For instance you can use color labels to:
- seperate files or folders that belong to a certain project from files that are unrelated
- emphasize the importance of a file
- point to the latest version of a file (for instance the latest version would be marked with a red label so that your colleagues that access the same folders know which file(s) use)

If you have more uses for the color labels you can share them in the comments section.

#087 - your machine's name

2007-07-16T18:01:00.000+02:00

You can see what your machine is called on the network by going into the preferences pane and clicking on sharing. You can change the name if you like.

OR

open the terminal and type "uname -n"

#086 - Geektool tip

2007-07-16T17:57:00.000+02:00

A few months ago I did a whole week on Geektool, but I still have some nice commands left taht you can put on your desktop.

How about this one:

df -l -m

This will show you the disk space used and the free space left, in Megabytes as well as in percentages, of all locally mounted drives. Put the refresh to about 30seconds. Pop in a USB memory key and watch as it appears in the list.

#085 - Wake up!

2007-07-13T12:05:00.000+02:00

I've posted about an alarm clock before, but this one is great too:

Aurora

It's free, it's easy to use and it's available in several languages. Only for Tiger (10.4 or up).

It'll wake your mac - even when it was powered off - and will start playing your favourite music to give your day a fun start.

#084 - remember your position

2007-07-12T11:24:00.000+02:00

If you have a long recording in your iTunes library, say a single track that's 1 hour long. You don't always have the time to listen all the way through. You can let iTunes remember where you where (in the track, not geographically ;-) ) and restart playing it from there the next time.

Select the track, right-click (or ctrl-click) and select get info. Alternatively use the keyboard shortcut command-I.
Go to "options" and check the "remember playback position"-checkbox.

Most podcasts have this set automatically, but iTunes U recordings for instance usually don't.

#083 - smart iPhoto albums

2007-07-11T10:35:00.000+02:00

Smart albums are so handy.

A quick shortcut for creating a smart album (instead of going through the menu) is to hold down the option key and click on the + sign on the bottom left side of your iPhoto window.

Let's try one:
Instead of selecting all your holiday pictures from your last family vacation and dragging them into a folder, you can create a smart folder with the following rule:
Date is between 'the date you left' and 'the date you returned'

Now if you only want to see your best pictures in this album, say for a slideshow for some friends, add the following rule (click on the + sign after the first rule):
My Rating is greater than 'set the number of stars'

I suggest 3 stars.

Now, if you start rating your pictures the ones that are good enough (4 or 5 stars) will automatically appear in this album.

Of course you can create lots of different rules, so play around with them and if you find a really handy set of rules, then please share your knowledge in the comments section.

#082 - tag, you're it!

2007-07-10T10:22:00.000+02:00

If you're like me you take maybe a thousand pictures each year, maybe more, maybe lots more. While iPhoto has no problem dealing with extremely large libraries, it gets difficult to find the exact picture you want.

iPhoto 6 allows you to tag your photos with keywords. You can use these to search for pictures very quickly.
It's a bit tricky though. iPhoto has some basic keywords already available, like "family" and "vacation", but to make most of them, you can add your own. Go to the iPhoto preferences and click on the keywords tab. To add your own keyword, click on the plus sign in the bottom.

Don't go overboard and create thousands of keywords. Think locations or general descriptions, like portrait or landscape, nightshot, sports, etc.

Now all you need to do is make a habit out of tagging your pictures when you import them...

To tag your pictures:
select one or more pictures or even movies and right-click or ctrl-click on your picture. Choose show info; in the keywords tab, you can now check the tags you wish to use.

Searching by keywords:
On the bottom of the screen on the left-hand side there's a few buttons. One of these buttons is a key. Push that button and you get a bunch of buttons that represent your tags. Click a few buttons and you'll see the number of pictures in the main part of the window being reduced to only the once that have these tags. If you want to start over, just click "reset".

Hopefully iPhoto 7 will introduce a more friendly way of adding tags and tagging pictures...

#081 - iCal tip

2007-07-09T10:15:00.000+02:00

If you have trouble remembering special dates, like national holidays etc, then this tip is for you:

iCal allows you to subscribe to online calendars or import calendars that are in the iCal format.
so if you search the web for the specific public calendar that you need you can add it's url or import the .ics-file and have all entries show up iCal.
To import a file go to the menubar and click file -> import.
To subscribe to a feed: In the menubar go to "calendar" and then click subscribe. Just paste the calendar's url in the box and you're set.

Most calendars I found on the net aren't feeds, but downloadable .ics files you need to import into iCal e.g.: if you "google" 'public holidays iCal' you'll find a number of sites that share calendars for lots of countries. Here are some examples of what the searched returned for me:

apple
feiertagskalender
airset

However if you have a Google account and you open google calendar you can find loads of handy calendars that are real feeds, so you always have up-to-date info.

You can probably find calendars other than the public holidays that you want to subscribe to, maybe the phases of the moon, maybe a colleagues google calendar or even your partner's.
If you found a really handy one or you created a fun one: let me know in the comments section.

#080 - Network utility

2007-07-06T11:51:00.000+02:00

It's amazing what great utilities Apple provides in Mac OS X. Often these small applications are overlooked, because they are slightly hidden in the Utilities folder.

One such great app is the Network Utility.
If you're not very familiar with the Terminal, but still need access to the very low-level network commands, then the Network Utility allows you to do just that.
Ping addresses, run traceroute, use netstat, perform Whois lookups and even run port scans without leaving the familiar OS X GUI.

#079 - JiWire Wi-Fi FInder

2007-07-05T11:00:00.000+02:00

One of my favourite widgets for the Yahoo! Widget Engine I mentioned yesterday is the JiWire Wi-Fi finder. Basically it's a directory of public Wifi access points all over the world. Just type in an address and it'll give you a list of the nearest access points. You can even get maps and driving directions to the hotspot of your choice!

Get it here.

Of course there's also a version for Dashboard. I don't have a direct link to it, but here's how to get it:
- go to the downloads section of the apple website
- goto widgets
- click on the category "networking and security"
- find JiWire in this list

#078 - Yahoo widget engine

2007-07-04T11:00:00.000+02:00

Lots of people like dashboard a lot. The idea of dashboard wasn't new and wasn't Apple's however. The Yahoo! Widget engine, originally named Konfabulator, existed long before Tiger was released. Some users still prefer the Yahoo! Widget Engine over Dashboard. It's most notable feature is the ability to have widgets on your desktop (as opposed to only in the HUD).

If you still use Panther give it a go.
If you run Tiger and still want to try it, I suggest you deactivate dashboard first (just google how to do it).

Get your free copy here.

#077 - Put your mac on a diet

2007-07-03T10:21:00.000+02:00

We've covered Xslimmer in the past. A tool that allows you to delete the unused part of a universal binary so it takes up less space on your harddrive.

Disclaimer: What I'm gonna show you today is NOT for beginners. If you do not have a clue about what you are doing, then don't do it.

So, here we go.

Our trusty friend the command line is gonna help us out once more. OS X has a command built-in that actually does what Xslimmer does. It's called "lipo". Make sure to use it only on a copy of a package and test the package afterwards (but before you delete the original).

The full manual for lipo can be found at the Apple developer's web page

the option -thin generates a new file with only the code you need.
an example could look like this:
lipo myprogram.app/Contents/MacOS/myprogram -thin i386 -output myprogram.app/Contents/MacOS/myprogramthin

now, cd to myprogram.app/contents/MacOS/ and remove the old folder:
rm -rf myprogram

Rename myprogramthin to myprogram and you should be good to go.

Another option you can use is -remove. This removes a specified "arch_type" from the universal binary and copies all remaining stuff to the output-file.

If you know what you're doing, and you're desperate for disk-space, give it a try...

#076 - Why upgrade to Leopard? part 2

2007-07-02T10:12:00.000+02:00

Spaces is a new feature that is available in Leopard. It allows you to have multiple virtual desktops so you can unclutter your desktop. You could for instance have a desktop with your mail and calendar a second desktop running your favourite game and a third one, where you work on your current project...

You may not find this very interesting if you have a 30" cinema display, but on a 13.3" Macbook this makes a lot of sense.

#075 - flickr export

2007-06-29T10:05:00.000+02:00

As you've probably noticed I took 2 days off. I'm back now with a wonderful tip for you.

Export your pictures from iPhoto directly to Flickr, with Flickrexport. There's also a Flickrexport for Aperture users.

This plugin isn't free, but at £12 it's not too expensive in my opinion. Makes life just that little bit easier doesn't it...

#074 - rate your songs automatically

2007-06-26T12:40:00.000+02:00

Rating all your iTunes music could be a tedious task. Use Autorate to do it for you based on play count and skip rate.

#073 - access webmail as POP

2007-06-25T15:22:00.000+02:00

Access your hotmail or other types of webmail from inside any POP mail client (like Thunderbird or Apple mail), with FreePOPs

#072 - Dockables

2007-06-22T10:52:00.000+02:00

Add these to your dock for quick access to some system functions like eject CD, shutdown, restart, etc...

Dockables is a free download. Only for Tiger (10.4.x).

#071 - iPDA

2007-06-20T10:48:00.001+02:00

Have an iPod? Want to turn into a PDA? Check this out.

#070 - Papers

2007-06-20T10:07:00.000+02:00

Papers is a great tool for importing, organizing, reading, archiving etc all of your scientific papers. It won the Apple 2007 design awards (this alone is worth it being mentioned here).

It's no longer free, but at 29€ it's not too expensive either. I wish I had this when I was writing my thesis...

#069 - IRC

2007-06-19T21:19:00.000+02:00

If you like IRC, check out Colloquy. Colloquy is very easy to use and has the look and feel of a real Apple application, you can even adjust part of the look. There's some plug ins and extras available to further customize your experience. It's free, but if you like it you can donate to the developer.

I'm no regular IRC user, so I only have basic knowledge and basic expectations from a chat client. If you're more demanding and you have a better alternative, feel free to share your knowledge in the comments section.

#068 - Spare Admin account

2007-06-18T20:07:00.000+02:00

If you set up your mac from scratch, always create a second account. The second account should be an admin account (pick an original name, like Administrator ;-) ) pick a good password and don't forget it.

I've managed to fix several problems without needing a bootcd, external drive or what have you, thanks to the fact that I could logon to an account that had not been touched. It does need to be an admin account or you'll never be able to get to the other user's files...

Even if you have more than one user, each with his own account (and even if they're all in the admin group) it's still nice to have a "clean" account to fall back to. Just in case.

Bonus: If you have a network and you run Apple Remote Desktop, make sure to always use the same name and password for this special account, so you can use this information to add all Macs to ARD (at once) and run commands using this account over the network. (If you don't have the same name and password on every machine this becomes a pain in the * very quickly)
Don't forget you need to give the account the rights to use Remote Desktop in the "sharing" preferences.

#067 - proximity based computing

2007-06-18T19:29:00.000+02:00

Let your Mac react to your presence or lack thereof using your bluetooth phone and some software:

- Lifehacker's article and great roundup of tools
- Metaquark
- Redux Computing
- The technocrat

#066 - Safari 3 Beta alongside Safari 2

2007-06-15T10:47:00.000+02:00

I mentioned the Safari for windows Beta a few days ago, but it's also available for Mac. If you choose to install this you should be warned that Beta software usually still has lots of bugs and problems, so don't do this if you are not sure you want to and be aware of all the potential risks.

There is a guide available here (macenstein) that explains how to use Safari 2 and 3 alongside each other. So if you're willing to test Safari 3 at least you still have the older version as a fallback option.

Sidenote:
I definitely do not recommend Windows users to download it yet - although I did mention it in a previous tip as a gateway app - as it is still very premature. Again: if you know what you are doing, this may not be a problem, but it may be better to leave it alone for a couple of weeks before you download and install it. Gives Apple some time to iron out the first and most important issues that come up.

#065 - You're never too old to learn...

2007-06-14T11:00:00.000+02:00

Apple has teamed up with a few top American Universities to start iTunes U. iTunes U can be best described as a collection of lectures from these universities (including Stanford, Berkeley, MIT, Duke and more) on various topics, that can be downloaded as a podcast.

Use them to study wherever you are. I can't wait to hear lectures from European Universities (G, I miss my student days). C'mon Alma Mater join the technological revolution!

Even if you're not trying to get a degree, but just want to know more about a subject this is definitely worth your time.

#064 - Why upgrade to Leopard in Octobre?

2007-06-13T10:43:00.000+02:00

Some people like to stick with what they know and what works, others like to have the latest and greatest at all time, but what if you're somewhere in between? You're willing to update, but you'd like to know for sure that you'll get something back like usability or performance.

Well, let's look at some possible reasons for upgrading to Leopard (10.5) in Octobre. The first reason is Time Machine. Time Machine automatically backs up your machine at all time. So if you ever change a document and save it, just before realising the previous version was better. Or you discover a file has suddenly gone missing. you'll be able to recover it, even from months ago.

The fancy interface we've all seen in the screenshots, should make it a very easy, smooth and visually appealing experience.
I have stressed backups enough in the past and with Time Machine, chances are everybody will finally be using it so I can stop ranting about it. That in itself might be a reason to upgrade :-)

Now let's all just hope we never need it...

#063 - This just in!

2007-06-12T21:53:00.000+02:00

Need something to convince your friends and family that a Mac is the way to go? Let them play around with the world's fastest browser for Windows: Safari. Just tell them all other things on the mac are just as great!

#062 - RAID

2007-06-11T11:55:00.000+02:00

OS X supports software RAID. So if you have more than 1 disc available, you could use RAID to protect your data at the cost of some storage space. Or you could speed up disc read/writes at the cost of a higher risk of failure.

These are the different possibilities you get with the Apple Disk Utility:

Mirrored RAID set: Generally called RAID 1: this takes 2 disks of the same size and writes to both at once. If one fails the other will have all the data and you can replace the broken drive without data loss. Cost=50% overhead in space.

Striped RAID set: Normally called RAID 0 because there really is no extra safety for your data, only nearly double the speed. Both disks are accessed at once, but only each gets part of the data, so you basically read/write at 2x the speed if you use a 2 disk array (most common). all disks need to be the same size as well. Cost= NO redundancy, 2x increase in failure probability.

Concatenated RAID set: is not a true raid set, but JBOD (just a bunch of disks) where several disks are used as one volume. All disks can be a different size. No real advantage, except you can have 1 single volume (nice if you need a large file share, and redundancy or speed are unimportant).

A software RAID 5 option is unavailable, hopefully this will be added in the next version of OS X.

#061 - iTunes tip

2007-06-08T10:24:00.000+02:00

In iTunes you can select how long you want to keep a podcast before it is deleted. For instance you may want to keep the last 2 episodes, you can change the setting in the preferences under the podcasts tab accordingly.

Unfortunately you cannot have different settings for different podcasts. The closest you can get to having different settings is to set a general rule in the preferences to (for instance) only keep the unplayed podcasts, then go into your podcast 'library' right-click or CTRL-click on a podcast and check DO NO AUTODELETE. Now this podcast will not follow the same deletion rule as the other podcasts.

#060 - Pixelmator

2007-06-07T10:19:00.000+02:00

Pixelmator is still vapourware at the moment, but I'm already very impressed as to what it will be capable of. Professional users probably won't drop Photoshop for it, but home users might. Rumour has it that Pixelmator will be released at a 49,99$ price point so it's dirt-cheap.

It's biggest bonus is:
- Integration with Automator which will make it easy to batch-process images.
- it's speed, since all filters are implemented to run on the GPU, based on the Apple's CoreImage libraries.
- the ability to capture files with the iSight camera directly into pixelmator

Edit: I'm sorry I just read the pixelmator blog again and it appears the price will be 59$. My mistake.

#059 - Antivirus

2007-06-06T10:24:00.000+02:00

OK, I here you thinking: why would I need an Antvirus package, it's a Mac, there are no virii for the Mac. And you are right of course. However, when you are in a network environment, connected to Windows machines, your Mac may still transmit a virus to these machines. You wouldn't want to infect your friends would you?

Go check out ClamXav for a free open source antivirus package or have a look at Avast! a commercial antivirus which offers a free home edition.

#058 - upgrade your songs

2007-06-05T11:46:00.000+02:00

Since a few days ago it is possible to get the entire EMI catalog in a DRM-free version via the iTunes store. The new section of the store is called iTunes plus and can be accessed with the latest verison of iTunes (7.2). You will be given a choice to upgrade any of your songs that is available as a DRM-free version for a small fee.
DRM-free means you can now convert the files to any sound format you like so you can use the files on any digital audio player out there and not just the iPod. The iPod still is the only player that syncs with iTunes though.

This does not mean you can freely distribute the files!

Also, the DRM-free versions come in a higher bitrate, ensuring better sound quality.

#057 - 5 great mac websites

2007-06-04T10:05:00.000+02:00

In no particular order:

The unofficial Apple weblog

Appleinsider

Macrumors

The Macalope

Versiontracker

#056 - more keyboard shortcuts

2007-06-01T11:00:00.000+02:00

- Command + A selects ALL
- Command + C copies your current selection
- Command + V pastes the previuosly copied content to the current location
- Command + X Copies the current selectionto the clipboard and removes it from the current location.

#055 - Keyboard shortcuts

2007-05-31T11:00:00.000+02:00

It's been a while since I showed you some handy shortcuts, so here goes:

- use Command + I to get info on the current selection of files.
- in most applications Command + f invokes a find dialog
- Command + S usually opens the Save As dialog
- Command + P usually opens the print dialog
- Command + Shift + P opens the page setup dialog

#054 - Super Duper

2007-05-30T12:16:00.000+02:00

Super Duper is very similar to Carbon copy cloner, which we looked at yesterday. The free version allows you to clone your disk and create bootable volumes.
If you pay the extra 27,95$ you can even schedule when to back up your data, update your old backup very quickly and even run scripts.
It's very easy to use and well worth a try.

#053 - Carbon Copy Cloner

2007-05-29T12:16:00.000+02:00

Carbon Copy Cloner is a tool you can use to copy your Mac's HD to any other HD or even to a .DMG file. Great for backup or for creating basic images for reinstalling lots of macs.

The current version is not a universal binary, but it works just fine in Rosetta, even without any noticeable slowdown (copying a disc takes long anyway). I expect the next version to be a universal binary however.

Of course you should not try to put your old powerpc image onto your new intel-based mac as it won't work!

#052 - you can never be too thin

2007-05-28T12:15:00.000+02:00

Since Apple moved to intel processors last year all new programs come in one big package that supports both the "old" PowerPC architecture and the "new" Intel architecture, this is called a universal binary. Since your mac only uses about half of the code in the package, this means the other half is sorta like the fat around your waist. You really don't need it.

So, is it possible to put your mac on a diet, making room for those Harddisk-hungry media files? Sure.

Xslimmer will trim the part your mac doesn't use of any niversal binary and save you that precious diskspace. It's not a free tool, but at less than 12$ it's not very expensive either.
The creators warn you though: some applications may not react very well to the treatment, in which case you might need to reinstall the ones that stopped working...

#051 - Secure copy

2007-05-25T11:00:00.000+02:00

For months I have been looking for the Mac-equivalent of WINSCP and only very recently I found exactly what I needed: FUGU. I should thank the guys from Systm for this, cause I learned about it on their AppleTV hack episode.

Fugu let's you do SFTP and SCP. SCP stands for Secure copy and originates from the Unix-world. It is one of the best ways to move large amounts of data between 2 servers.

Fugu's GUI looks a lot like Transmit, which is a good thing. It's very easy to use and it's available as a free download.

Enjoy!

#050 - Backitymac

2007-05-24T11:00:00.000+02:00

Backups are a pain, but this little tool makes them almost fun to do: backitymac. You can choose exactly what to back up, really easy. For instance backing up your Safari bookmarks or your Apple mail is a simple as checking the corresponding checkbox. Go check it out, it's free and I can't stress enough, how simple it is to use.

#049 - Stattoo

2007-05-23T11:00:00.000+02:00

Lot's of people like the idea of having some basic info on their desktop. Like disk use, the weather forecast, etc. A multitude of tools is available that let's you do this. We've discussed Geektool in the past, which is my favourite, but that may get a little techy for a lot of people. So I'd like to point you to Stattoo. Stattoo is not free, but there's a free trial available. It's very easy and looks great.

Enjoy!

#048 - Locations

2007-05-22T11:00:00.001+02:00

We missed a beat yesterday, sorry for that. Today we're back with another useful tip:

Just like in real estate, networking on your Mac is all about location.

Suppose you have a fixed IP at home and at work you need to use DHCP. Or at work the company policy demands that wireless networks are turned off. Well, you can create different configurations for your network to do this. Call one "home" the other "work" and configure them accordingly. Now if you come home, you can switch from teh "work" location to your "home" location and that's that.

Switching can be done from the apple menu -> Location -> Select your location from the list.

Creating a new location must be done in the Network preference pane. Just create a new one, name it and set it up to your liking. You can create as many locations as you need or like.

#047 - sms

2007-05-18T11:49:00.000+02:00

I'm not a huge fan of Dashboard, but lots of people are.
One widget I like though is the callwave dashboard widget, this lets you send free sms messages to (almost) any mobile phone. It even loads all your contacts from your Apple Address Book so you don't need to know all phone numbers by heart.

#046 - Icons

2007-05-17T11:49:00.000+02:00

Did you know that you can change your icons on your Mac?

Simply download an icon you like and copy it. Then click on the folder or file you want to change and press command+I (or right-click and select get info). Now click on the icon you see in that information window and paste your new icon. Voila.

Have fun looking for great icons.

#045 - BackLight

2007-05-16T11:44:00.000+02:00

Ever wonder why people get all those fancy screensavers? I mean, really, most of the time the screensaver won't run when you're around, so what's the point? You may as well just have the screen turn off, right? Right.

So let's make sure we see our screensaver :-)

Backlight is a cool utility that let's you run your screensaver as your desktop background. It's under 1Mb, it looks great and it's free. What more could a person want?

Unfortunately you will notice that some screensavers tend to use lots of CPU-cycles so if you need top-performance from your machine, this may not be a good idea. But still, it's great to show off to your friends ;-)

Enjoy!

#044 - Learn more about your favourite Apple apps

2007-05-15T11:00:00.000+02:00

I only recently discovered these myself, straight from the horse's mouth and best of all: they are free!

See you in class. :-)

#043 - When to buy a Mac?

2007-05-14T11:40:00.000+02:00

It seems like a good idea to get a new mac, so you go out and buy one. However, next week, a new model comes along and you feel like you've been ripped off. At least in the PC world, they sort of give you a heads up about when the new model will be coming... So, what do you do to avoid this?

Surf to mactactic or the macrumors buyer's guide to see when an update is due. Not always perfect, but a very good indication of when NOT to buy one. For instance, at this moment you'd probably want to wait until WWDC to see which new products are launched and which are updated. Also, checking out the various mac rumor sites to find out what may be on the horizon is not such a bad idea.

#042 - Mozy

2007-05-11T16:40:00.000+02:00

I've talked about doing backups in the past, but today I'm gonna go a bit further than just replicating data to an external disk: Mozy.

Mozy lets you backup files from your mac to Mozy's servers. There's a free 2Gb account or you can sign up for an unlimited account for a small fee. The client (you need to install this piece of client software for it to work) supports block-level differential backups, so you're not transferring any more data than absolutely necessary. It also does encryption to keep your data safe. Since the backup is not on the same site as your mac, it's extra safe in case of a fire or other disaster.

#041 - Apple Remote Desktop

2007-05-10T16:39:00.000+02:00

Basically Apple Remote Desktop is VNC on steroids. Control all the macs on your network, observe up to 50 machines at once. Run remote spotlight searches, run scripts, perform updates, schedule jobs, get reports about soft- or hardware etc. Anything a sysadmin might need to remotely manage his/hers mac-side of the network is available and does the job perfectly.

The biggest tip I can give you however is to get a 2nd copy that you run on a seperate machine as a task server.

It's not cheap and it's not really meant for a home network, but if you feel the need to perform some of the tasks mentioned above this is THE TOOL to do it with. Somehow I feel Apple really doesn't promote this product enough, it's that good.

Check the tutorials on Apple's site as well.

#040 - Keyboard shortcuts

2007-05-09T11:18:00.000+02:00

Nothing is faster to navigate around your mac than your keyboard, so let's start with 5 very easy and very handy keyboard shortcuts:

- command+W closes the current window (or the current tab, if you're in a browser)
- command+Q quits the current application
- command+Tab lets you quickly swap applications (even faster than expose)
- command+N can be used to open a new window in the finder or another application (a browser for example)
- comand+H hides the current application, unless all others are already hidden (a tiny flaw in OSX?)

I'll be posting more shortcuts in bite-sized chunks in the future. In the meantime, you can start to use these and you will find out soon enough, you will not be able to live without them anymore.

#039 - Handbrake

2007-05-08T12:10:00.000+02:00

Handbrake is a tool you can use to back up your DVD's to watch them on your laptop or iPod whilst on the road. Great if you travel a lot and want to watch your favourite movies in the hotel or on the plane.

I do not promote piracy, but I do believe that having a way to watch the DVD's you paid for, the way you want to watch them, whilst on the road, should be possible.

Handbrake is the easiest tool available in my opinion. It's not only available for Mac, but also for Windows and Linux. If it's legal to do so in your country, then go give it a try.

#038 - Boot options

2007-05-07T23:00:00.000+02:00

There's a few boot options for your mac that you just have to know.

1) Boot your mac into "target disc mode": hold "T" during startup. A firewire symbol will appear on the screen when ready. You can now use your mac as a firewire drive connected to other machines.

2) Boot from CD: hold "C"

3) Choose your startup volume: hold the option key and you will be prompted for the bootup volume.

#037 - Geektool Week - Day 5

2007-05-04T12:10:00.000+02:00

Our last day of Geektool week. I'm sure you have a good view of what's possible with Geektool and that you understand why it's one of my favourites. Especially if you're a sysadmin running an X-serve, Geektool can be a lifesaver :-)

What things could you do with Geektool that we haven't discussed yet? Well you could monitor your disk use for instance:
enter the following command in a new shell item and Geektool will display all mounted drives and their disk use for you: df -l -m

You could display your IP address: "ipconfig getifaddr en0" will give you the ip for your wired network and "ipconfig getifaddr en1" will display the ip for your wireless network (on a Mac laptop that is!) If one of the interfaces is not connected it will not be displayed. To make most of this, I created 2 shell items and put one of the above commands in each item, refresh that every 30 seconds. I can now easily see where I'm connected to and see that I am correctly getting an IP. Of course sometimes the biggest bonus is just knowing what your IP is :-)

There's lots more you can do with Geektool and I'm already thinking of doing a second Geektool week at a later date. In the meantime, download your copy experiment with it and share your scripts/tricks in the comments section.

I'd also like to mention that the author has made the source code available for download, so if someone feels like further enhancing the tool or just recompiling it to create a universal binary (cause I'm not sure it already is, might be running in Rosetta. Without any problems I should add.) that would be great. Again, share your knowledge, that's what the net is for.

Have a nice weekend.

#036 - Geektool Week - Day 4

2007-05-03T16:34:00.000+02:00

Today, we'll be looking at displaying a picture on our desktop that gets automatically updated. So, no shell item this time.

Create a new item, this time select picture. Enter the source for the file, this can be a location on the internet, or on a local drive, wherever.
Go to the Style tab and select how you want the image to look. Remember to set the location and size for this item.

I use this link to display a weather satellite picture of my area and have this updated from the web every hour.

You can go to weather.com look up the picture you want to see on your desktop and copy the url. The most current will always have the same name, so this is very easy. Set the refresh to 3600 seconds.

If you don't have a connection when you boot up your machine, the picture will not show up until the first refresh. If you lose your connection, the picture that's there will stay until the first refresh after getting reconnected.

If you want a cartoon or something else to be fetched from the web, chances are, the name is different every day so you may have to write a script to generate the url for you. Not so easy, but maybe someone can post an example in the comments... (possibly you could fetch the picture with curl, and then rename it to the same name every time)

#035 - Geektool Week - Day 3

2007-05-02T16:34:00.000+02:00

use geektool to monitor your system's activity:

create a new item - make it a shell item and enter the following:
top -l 1 -n 5 -o-cpu

this wil show the top 5 running processes sorted by cpu-usage.

To view your system's uptime: again, create a new shell item and this time type "uptime".

#034 - Geektool Week - Day 2

2007-05-01T16:33:00.000+02:00

As promised yesterday I'm gonna show you today how to put the date and time on your desktop using geektool.

Create a new entry. Select shell item and in the command tab type the following:
date "+DATE: %d/%m/%y TIME: %H:%M"

set the refresh to 30 or 60 seconds so the time on your screen is never too far off.

I use it in combination with a full year's calendar. The calendar goes on top and date and time directly underneath. Of course it's up to you where you put it.

#033 - Geektool week

2007-04-30T11:00:00.000+02:00

This week I will be celebrating my own birthday by showing you my favourite application: geektool. Read what geektool exactly is on the developer's page, there's no use in repeating it all here. :-)
Every day, we'll go through 1 example of what you can do with this wonderful tool.

Geektool lets you put different items on your screen: the output of a shell command, an image or the contents of a file.

For the first tip, I'll show you how to put a calendar on your desktop.

Create a new geektool item, make it a shell item. you need to enter a command in the editbox. For a calendar you can enter: "cal" This will show you a calendar for the current month. For a full year type: cal -y. Whilst I was surfing 1 of my favourite sites: lifehacker.com I ran into a very advanced version of the calendar, which indicates the current day with ##. Get the script here. I don't use it myself, instead I have a second Shell item in geektool to show the date and time. Tomorrow you'll learn how to do that as well.

Of course you need to adjust the size of the output, so everything is correctly visible on screen and position it wherever you feel most comfortable. It may be a good idea to change you wallpaper into something that allows for easier reading... You can also adjust the colour of the text.

Experiment with other shell scripts and share your best results in the comments section.

edit (May 1st 2007): You want to set the refresh very slow as the calendar changes either only monthly or yearly, but don't go overboard. Choose something like 3600 seconds

#032 - Wine? Crossover!

2007-04-27T10:44:00.000+02:00

Yesterday, I briefly showed how to run Windows or linux on your mac alongside OSX. Today I will explain how to run Windows applications on OS X without running an additional OS.

Wine is a project that originated on linux. it's not an emulation of Windows, but rather an implementation of al the API's needed to run a Windows application. This means there's very little overhead when running these programs, not only in cpu-load, but also in wasted diskspace. (A wine installation is considerably smaller than a Virtual machine running a full Windows version.)

Unfortunately I don't know of a free implementation of Wine for the mac, but there is a commercial version available from Codeweavers that works great for lots of application, called Crossover. Check it out here. A free 30-day trial is available.

If you know someone who is tempted to switch to a mac, this may be the tool that provides the safety net...

#031 - Virtual Machines

2007-04-26T10:43:00.000+02:00

If you want to run Windows or any other operating system on your intel mac, you have more options than you think. First of all there's bootcamp, which allows you to choose at startup, which OS you wanna boot up. The other option is a virtual machine. Using intel's latest technology, the performance hit for these VM's has been reduced to an absolute minimum, so it's really a viable option now. Another plus is that using a virtual machine gives you access to more OS'es than Apple's Bootcamp does.

The best-known virtualisation software for Mac is Parallels. Parallels is very advanced, so much so, that mentioning all it's features would require too much of an effort to write them all down here. Although it's not free, it's great value for money! I highly recommend this product.

Very well-known on the Windows and Linux platform and coming to the Mac very soon is VMWARE. I got their Beta version in January, if you can get your hands on a copy, give it a go. The biggest advantage in my opinion is that VMWARE has a bunch of pre-installed OS'es available for download. so-called Virtual Appliances. They range from firewall appliances or browser appliances to complete server solutions for Small to medium sized businesses and may be what you were looking for in the first place, when you wanted to install a secondary OS on your Mac. Pricing is of course not yet known, as it hasn't been officially released yet, but since VMWARE released a free "player" and "server" for Windows and Linux, they may offer a free version for the Mac as well.

#030 - VNC

2007-04-25T10:42:00.000+02:00

If you have more than one computer in your house, it may be handy if you're able to control all machines remotely. VNC is a free solution that supports all platforms.

On OS X you need to install 2 different programs for it to completely work: a client and a server (the server is not needed if you only want to remote control other machines from here and you don't want other machines to be able to control your machine). This may sound complicated, but it's really simple. Chicken of the VNC is a VNC client that allows you to view and control another machines desktop. That other machine needs to run VNC server, which on mac is available as Vine server (previously known as OSX VNC).

VNC not only allows you to connect to a machine that is in your network, but also to machines connected to the internet at the other side of the globe. (I advise you to read up on SSH tunneling and firewall settings before you do this though)

Set vine server to run at startup and protect it with a password. If you launch Chicken of the VNC you will be prompted for a machine name, you either enter the name or the IP. The next dialog will ask you for the password and that's it. You can tweak performance by setting the quality of the display (for instance you may wish to view the remote desktop in black and white or at low resolution, especially if you are connecting to a machine that is somewhere on the internet instead of in the room next door)

#029 - GDisk

2007-04-24T10:42:00.000+02:00

This little tool allows you to use your gmail mail account as online storage. All it needs are your logon credentials. you can even create a new account from inside GDisk and manage multiple acounts at the same time.

Once you have it running you can easily upload or download your files.

GDisk can be downloaded here. It's donationware so please donate if you find this a useful utility.

#028 - Smart Folders

2007-04-23T11:20:00.000+02:00

Most of our user's don't know this, so chances are a bunch of you don't know this either. In OS X you can have smart folders. These folders will fill themselves with files according to search criteria you have set up. So if - for instance - you're working on a project, all files from that project could automatically end up in this one folder. No more digging around in the finder to find that spreadsheet, it's all there.

How do you set it up? Simple. Go to the File menu in Finder and click "new smart folder" (or click option command N). Set up your search criteria just like you would create a smart playlist on iTunes. Add as much criteria as needed.

Edit: I should mention this only works on versions 10.4.X and up.

#027 - More free font management

2007-04-20T15:27:00.000+02:00

Linotype FontExplorer X is a free font management tool that has all the popular features: collections, activating and deactivating fonts etc. It also allows you to buy fonts online, all from within the application. It might be all you want or need from a font management tool, without the steep price. Check it out here.

#026 - Font management

2007-04-19T20:00:00.000+02:00

if you hava a large font collection, some applications may become slow to start up. Especially Photoshop, Indesign, Quark or the like. You don't need expensive font management tools however. Apple's own Font Book works just fine. It allows you to (de)activate fonts, group them into different collections and preview them easily. You can find the font book under the Applications > Utilities Folder.

#025 - Duck!

2007-04-18T11:00:00.000+02:00

Do you sometimes find yourself having more than 2 different IM clients open at the same time? MSN, AIM, ICQ, Jabber, ...

Adium is a tool that can do talk all these protocols, all in just one very attractve package. (The full list of all supported IM protocols is impressive, with over 10 different popular ones). It's fully skinnable so it can be tweaked to fit your every design requirement and will fit right in on your Apple desktop. All your contacts will fit nicely into one window and your desktop will stay nice and tidy.
there's a bunch of extra's available on the website as well, including sounds, icons, scripts etc.

Get this great free utility @ www.adiumx.com

#024 - Go PRO!

2007-04-17T11:00:00.000+02:00

Today I'm just quickly gonna show you a few of the advantages you can get, when updating to Quicktime Pro:

- Watch movies fullscreen (although you can already do this if you install another media player like VLC)
- cut movies and scenes
- export movies to lots of different file formats, for instance you could export a movie for use on your iPod or website, with different quality settings to get the best experience on those platforms.
- capture movies using a firewire camera
- save movies from the web to you local drive
- add an audiotrack to your video, for instance for doing voiceovers

If your into videoblogging or creating videos of your latest family vacation, it's a tool you cannot do without! Go pro via Apple's quicktime website

#023 - VLC

2007-04-16T11:00:00.000+02:00

VLC or Videolan client is a mediaplayer that is available on most platforms, including Mac. It plays nearly every audio and video format out there and it's free! What more can you want?
Check the website videolan.org for more information and download your copy.

#022 - Firefox

2007-04-13T11:00:00.000+02:00

In previous tips I discussed Flock and Camino. Both are excellent browsers and both are based on Firefox, so it seems only fair that we should talk about what appears to be their mommy: Firefox itself.

The big benefit of Firefox is that it's the same on all platforms, from Windows to Linux to Mac. This means that everyone can feel immediately feel at home, no matter on what platform you are currently surfing. Another plus Firefox has over Flock or Camino for instance is that all the new features appear on firefox first, so you're really on the cutting edge. Give it a try, get your copy at www.getfirefox.com

Lot's of extensions are available to customize your web-experience and turn Firefox into the perfect browser for you, make sure to check these out as well.

#021 - Camino

2007-04-12T11:00:00.000+02:00

If you're still running older versions of MacOS X (meaning 10.3.9 or older) Safari really starts to show it's age. With no way to download the latest version from the Apple website, an alternative browser may be the only way to go. So, if that's the case and you're looking for a webbrowser other than Safari that blends nicely with the Apple OS in terms of look and feel, you need to check out Camino. It's based on the same engine as Firefox, which means that it's a very fast and reliable browser. I use Camino on a daily basis myself and apart from the fact that it doesn't do RSS it does everything you expect from a modern browser. One of the features I like is the ability to convert your bookmark groups on your bookmark toolbar into a tab group. When you click this tab group, all bookmarks in this folder open in different tabs automatically. Great if you want to start your day of with all your regular newspages.

Download your free copy here.

#020 - Folder actions

2007-04-11T11:00:00.000+02:00

If you spent some time yesterday investigating Automator, you'll probably have discovered today's tip yourself. You can add Actions to a folder. Right-click (or CTRL-click) on a folder an enable Folder Actions first. Right-click again and choose configure folder actions. You can now choose which actions to run on which folders. Pick the folder in the left column first and then add the script you want to execute.
Some Applescripts are already built-in, like rotating images etc., but you can of course add your own applescripts or save your automator actions as a folder actions.

This is a very nice feature if you still run Panther or older versions of MacOS and would still like lots of the functionality you would find in automator.

You could for instance use it to rotate all images you put in a specific folder and automatically upload them to an FTP-server as a PNG file. The possibilities are endless, especially if you learn how to write your own applescript.

Enjoy!

#019 - Automator

2007-04-10T11:00:00.000+02:00

In most people's daily workflow lots of the same things need to be done over and over again. Doing thing over and over again is not much fun and since it's exactly what computers are good at we should let our machines handle this stuff. Enter Automator.

Automator is a program that first appeared in Tiger. It's sole purpose is to stitch actions together into a workflow. It's fairly easy to get started with and lots of online resources are available with ready-made actions.

Mailing daily reports to a bunch of people, renaming files and importing them into an application, pulling pictures of a website on a daily basis, all this can be done with just a few mouseclicks from now on.

Some great sites where you can read up on automator or download ready-made actions:
apple's automator site
apple downloads
Automator.us
Automator World

#018 - Turn you mac into an alarm clock

2007-04-09T11:00:00.000+02:00

In a previous tip I showed you how to shut down your mac at a later time, so you could fr insance listen to music till you fell asleep and not have your battery empty in the morning. That was kind of a quick and dirty solution. Here's an application that goes several steps beyond: iTunes alarm
You can download it on the developers home page or here.

Not only does it let you snooze your mac when you go to sleep, it also wakes it up in the morning so you can wake up with your own music instead of that noisy thing nobody really likes.

#017 - backup!

2007-04-06T11:00:00.000+02:00

Backups, everybody knows they should do them, but nobody ever does.
Why not? Because it's inconvenent mostly. Most people back up their files by copying them manually onto a seperate disk (DVD, CD, external HD, whatever). After a while though, they forget. The iPhoto library is getting huge and burning a DVD is just not very convenient right now, so you postpone, again, and again, and then the drive fails....

The answer is: an automated backup!
Actually you don't even need special software for this either. Remember that your Mac has unix underneath and so it comes with some very handy commandline tools.
The following command copies all data from source to target:

rsync -ar --progress "source" "target"

Every time it runs it copies only the changes, so it may take time to do the initial copy, but once it is set up, it should be very quick (of course it depends on how much data you have, how often you sync and how much data changes between syncs)

Of course there's little use in copying files to a different folder on the same drive, so it's best - and very cheap these days as well - to get a large external hard drive. Let's say the Drive is called "MyDrive". In this case you could back up your complete home folder just like this:

rsync -ar --progress /Users/"myhomefolder" /Volumes/MyDrive

Of course you need to change "myhomefolder" to the correct name for your folder.

Now, as long as this is not running automatically, we haven't made much progress.
So, this is what you do:
- open the Terminal (go to Applications | Utilities and you will find the terminal there).
- type "vi Mybackupscript.sh"
- type "a" to enable editing
- type the rsync command like I showed you above
- press the "esc" key
- type ":wq" to save your miniature script
- Quit the Terminal

You know have a script ready!
Take a look back at tip #002 to see how you can schedule this job to run when you're not there. Make sure it's scheduled to run when your external drive is connected, otherwise the job will of course fail as it will be unable to find the volume to copy to.

If you want to run this script an extra time in between scheduled times, type "./Mybackupscript.sh" in the terminal.

#016 - export/import Safari bookmarks

2007-04-05T11:00:00.000+02:00

If you ever need to reinstall your system, you do not want to lose your bookmarks. Most browsers offer an easy way to import or export them, but if you are using Safari and you're still running 10.3.x (Panther) - like I do on some systems, you have no option to do this. (Apple solved this in the Tiger version of Safari, but even if you intend to upgrade you still need to export your old Panther-bookmarks)

This is where you can find them on your system:
Go to your home folder open the library and copy the file named: com.apple.safari.plist
Place it in the same location on your new system and voila!

I should mention though, that if you do a clean install of the OS, you need to launch Safari first, then close it again, overwrite the file with your old copy and open Safari again to see your bookmarks.

#015 - Flock

2007-04-04T11:00:00.000+02:00

If you want to give a new web-browser a go, try Flock. You can download it at www.flock.com. It's based on the same engine as the very popular firefox browser and is especially tuned to be a more "social" browser. You can upload and share your photos, view your friend's photo's, subscribe to RSS feeds or even update your blog etc., all directly from the browser window. It's extensible, it's free and it has a very sleek look as well.

Enjoy!

#014 - flip4mac

2007-04-03T11:00:00.000+02:00

Quicktime is great, but it's time for Apple to include support for more media files, like wmv for instance. Installing Windows Media Player is not my favourite option, I'm sure it's not yours either. Especially since Microsoft no longer develops it. You can still find the 'old' version, but there will probably never be a new one.

The good folks at Telestream however developed flip4mac, a plug-in for Quicktime that supports a multitude of file types . A free version is available from the Microsoft website (yes, you've read that correctly), but check out the other versions as well on the flip4mac page.

If you've already bought Quicktime Pro to do some video editing and compression, then flip4mac makes the perfect companion, because it allows you to compress your media files to several popular formats that are not normally included with Quicktime Pro. Pricing varies from 29$ up to 179$, but it's worth every penny if you start dabbling around with digital video compression. You can get a trial version or buy the one that meets your needs here.

Enjoy!