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25 More Tech Tips and Tricks

As a result, everybody, even experts, winds up with knowledge holes—things everybody thinks everybody else knows about the basics of consumer electronics.

When I started writing down the ones I figured everybody should know, my column was twice as long as it’s supposed to be. But hey—on the Web, nobody can hear you exceed your word count. I lopped out half of them and saved them for this e-newsletter.

Think of it as “Today’s Pogue Column (Cont’d).”

Screenshots
*Especially if you’re a beginner (or an expert), it’s frequently useful to capture the image of what’s on the screen — an error message or diagram, for example.

*In Windows, PrintScreen key copies the whole screen image, as a graphic, onto your invisible Clipboard, so you can paste into an e-mail message or any other program (“This is what I’m seeing! What do I do now?!”). If you add the Alt key, you copy only the front window.

*On the Mac, press Command-Shift-3. (Command is the key with the propeller on it, next to the Space bar.) You hear a snapshot sound, and you get a graphics file on your desktop—a picture of the entire screen image.

*If you press Command-Shift-4 instead, you get a crosshair cursor; you can draw across just one portion of the screen. Or, if you now tap the Space bar, you turn the cursor into a little camera icon. You can now click on just one window or toolbar that you want to copy.

*In both cases, you can hold down the Control key to copy the image to the Clipboard instead of leaving a file on the hard drive.

E-mail
* If you get a message from your bank or eBay about a problem with your account, it’s probably a “phishing” scam. It’s a fake, designed to lure you into typing your name and password so the bad guys can have it. Delete it. If you’re concerned, visit the institution’s Web site in your browser by typing in its address (like Citibank.com) — not by clicking the link in e-mail.

* Before you pass on any amazing item you get by e-mail—Obama’s a Muslim, the bubble boy wants greeting cards, the Nieman-Marcus $400 cookie recipe — first check it out at Snopes.com, the world clearinghouse for Internet scams and rumors.

* If a blue underlined link shows up in an e-mail message, you can mouse over it without clicking to see what Web site it plans to open.

* If you get a message from someone you know that relates a horror story about being mugged in England (and needing you to wire money immediately), delete it. It’s a popular scam — even if it’s the correct e-mail address of someone you know.

* File too big to send by e-mail? Then use yousendit.com or transferbigfiles.com. You can transmit huge files, using the site as a free intermediary parking space.

Editing Text
* On your keyboard, there’s a difference between the Backspace and Del keys. Press Backspace to delete the typed character to the left of the blinking insertion-point cursor, as usual. Pressing Del, however, removes the character to its right.

* In Microsoft Word, when you paste in text from another document—say, a Web site — you may not want all the boldface, colors, fonts and other formatting from the original source. Instead of using the regular Paste command, in that case, open the Edit menu and click Paste Special. Click Unformatted Text. You’ll get just the text, without the fanciness.

iPhone
* You can magnify the iPhone’s screen, for ease in reading tiny type, by double-tapping with three fingers. Then pan around by dragging with three fingers.

Of course, you first have to turn this feature on. Do that by tapping Settings, then General, then Accessibility. (On the same screen, you’ll find an option to make the text bigger in the built-in iPhone programs, which is handy in its own way.)

* Has your iPhone screen image suddenly become mysteriously enlarged? There’s nothing quite as alarming as seeing jumbo text and graphics, and nothing restores the phone to the way it’s supposed to be.

I can’t tell you how many people trek off to the Apple Store to get their “broken” iPhones fixed. Of course, the real problem is that you’ve accidentally turned on screen zooming (described in the previous tip). Double-tap with three fingers to restore the screen magnification.

Other Cellphones
* When your phone starts ringing, you can silence it quickly by pressing any key on the sides. (It’s still ringing — you can either answer it or let it go to voicemail — but at least you’ve cut the sound.) That’s good to remember when you’re someplace where phone silence is golden: for example, at a concert, in surgery or in church.

Web
*Don’t reach for the mouse to go back to the previous Web page. Just tap the Backspace key. (Alt+left-arrow key also works for Back, and Alt+right-arrow for Forward. In this article, if you have a Mac, substitute the Option key for Alt.)

* After you type a word or phrase into a Search box, don’t click the Search button. Just press the Enter key.

(The Enter key also works to click “Go” after you’ve typed an address, or the highlighted button, like “O.K.” or “Print,” in most dialog boxes. Yes, there are people who don’t realize that.)

* On brand-name Web sites (eBay, Facebook, Amazon and so on), click the upper-left logo to return to the site’s home page.

* At translate.google.com, you can choose languages you want to translate from and to. Then you paste in some copied text (or the address of a Web site). In a flash, the text is translated — roughly, to be sure, but at no charge.

* Who needs a dictionary? In the Google search box, type “define schadenfreude” (or whatever the word is). Press Enter.

Computers
* The Esc key (top left of the keyboard) means, “close this” or “cancel this.” It can close a menu or a dialog box, for example.

* You can duplicate a file icon (instead of moving it) if you press the Alt key as you drag it out of its window.

* You can switch among open programs by pressing Alt+Tab (or Command-Tab on the Mac). On the Mac, the much less known Command-tilde (the ~ key, upper left corner) switches among windows in a single program.

Mac Specials
* Anything you can print, you can turn into a PDF document — an amazingly convenient feature. Choose the Print command — but instead of choosing Print, click the PDF pop-up menu and choose Save as PDF.

* It’s often very useful to have a document, Web page or e-mail message read aloud to you — to “proof-listen” to it, for example, or just to listen to an article while you’re getting dressed in the morning. In the Speech pane of System Preferences, turn on “Speak selected text.” Click Set Key to choose a key combination. Pressing it makes the Mac read anything on the screen, at the rate, and in the character voice, that you’ve specified.

A Baker’s Dozen Tips for Spring Cleaning Your Mac

Whether you’re a recent convert, ambivalent veteran or one of those hardened Apple fanboys, let us remind you: a Mac, like any other computer, needs to be maintained. No, you probably don’t need anti-virus software (yet), you may never have to fiddle with registry editing, and you’ll likely never need to reinstall the operating system. But you may face a kernel panic, a raft of mysterious app crashes or the dreaded spinning beach ball of death. We’ve put together thirteen tips for keeping our Macs lean, clean computing machines. Spring has sprung, so, while you dust off your shelves and empty your closets, do some Mac maintenance, too.

1. Get a backup drive and use it.

Time MachineJust do it already. We like Apple’s Time Machine because you set it and forget it, but options abound. (See our story on easy ways to back up.) Before anything else, put it on your to-do list and make it happen, lest you end up like the legions of sad-sack schmucks we regularly counsel when they have their laptops stolen or suffer a hard drive failure. So while you fold up your winter sweaters, have a backup going in the background. ‘Nuff said.

2. Dump unused apps.

dump appsGo through your Applications folder and take the opportunity to chuck out all those programs you never use — old versions of AIM, various peer-to-peer apps that are defunct, weird shareware for mounting serial-to-USB adapters and so on. With Macs, you’re almost always safe by simply dragging the application to the trash and emptying it. Some software, however, distributes itself throughout your system library, so it’s worth using software that hunts down all those miscellaneous files and chucks them too. (We like the free AppCleaner.) You’ll free up precious hard drive space and find it easier to locate the applications you actually use.

3. Wack your widgets.

widgetsWe’ll admit to relying on a few handy widgets — we love iStat, for instance — but have also discovered that some widgets may end up being incredible resource hogs that can subtly eat up precious processing power, or even cause hang-ups and crashes. (Our homemade Web-clip Pandora widget was a real system killer.) Go to your Dashboard, then click the plus sign. Hit ‘Manage Widgets’ and, in the pop-up Widget Manager, un-check any you don’t use. For a deeper purge, go to Macintosh>Library>Widgets and permanently delete any of those files. (It will require you enter your admin password.)

4. Purge your fonts.

Believe it or not, fonts can be real bugbears that chew up serious processing power or cause all kinds of inexplicable conflicts that lead application and system crashes. By default, Apple installs tons of fonts for use by the system — which you shouldn’t delete — as well as dozens of optional ones that you can clear out if you don’t think you’ll ever need them (unless you plan on designing Web pages using Kanji or Cherokee script). Open Font Book (in Applications), and select User to see the ones you’ve installed. Alternatively, select All Fonts, and select and delete any you don’t need. If it’s an important system font, a warning will pop up; definitely do not delete those, or you’ll risk harming your system.

5. Clear off your desktop.

cleanedIf you’re like our parents, your desktop is littered with the detritus of literally hundreds of e-mail forwards, groan-worthy Powerpoint photo assemblages and unused MS Word files from 2002. Besides being the computer equivalent of living in abject squalor, desktop hoarding also saps processing power, as your Mac tracks and updates quick-look info constantly for every file and folder on your desktop. Clean those up, get in the habit of popping ’em in folders, and scoot the folders into sub-folders within your Users>Documents folder. For easy access, drag that folder to the Dock beside the trash, and you’ll have one-click access to everything.

6. Get permissions in order.

disk permissionsExperts disagree, but we’ll take Apple’s word: if you’ve found your Mac slowing down, spinning that beach ball, or suffering application crashes, it’s time to do some maintenance. Thankfully it’s very easy. Launch ‘Disk Utility’ (in Applications>Utilities) and select your hard drive in the left column. In the panel on the right, click ‘Repair Disk Permissions,’ which runs a Unix routine to correct any creeping errors in your startup disk. Depending on how long it’s been since you last did this, how fast your processor is, or how messed up your system is, it’ll take anywhere from two minutes to ten. Let it do its thing, and then be amazed at how much faster things run.

7. Go monolingual.

monolingualBy default, your Mac comes preloaded with a bevy of foreign languages, which is convenient if you’re a polyglot, but is otherwise an extravagant waste of space if you just stick to one tongue. In order to work correctly, that means that every application Apple loads on your system contains the necessary files to work in multiple languages. You can safely delete these and potentially free up a few gigs on your hard drive. (We got back more than 3GB — a huge savings for an old laptop.) You could do it manually, but ‘Monolingual’ is free software that’ll do it for you, while making sure to not delete crucial files that prevent your Mac from functioning properly. Run it after every software update, since language packs are added back in. Once again, with emphasis added: do a system backup before running it in case things go sour. (Click here for a superb rundown on how to use ‘Monolingual’ correctly.)

8. Jam up your RAM.

ramFor your Mac to run smoothly, especially when you have a bunch of applications open simultaneously or if you do video or audio editing, you need to have a lot of RAM installed. A base model MacBook comes with 2GB. (Just running the OS requires one gig.) RAM is extremely cheap these days, so hit up your favorite online store (and we like Crucial.com) to figure out what type you need. For a hundred bucks or so, you’ll turbocharge your Mac.

9. Give your hard drive a little space.

hard drive spaceWhile RAM is important to a smoothly running Mac, a lesser-known albatross is also a hazardous one. Like New York real estate, space is crucial. Take a look at your hard drive; it turns out you should have a minimum of about 10-percent of your space free at all times, especially if you’re regularly using large files for processes like video, audio or photo editing. If your drive ever gets below that amount, your Mac will slow down. When you start hitting the few hundred megabytes danger zone, you’ll likely start crashing, too. Worst case: It may get so full it won’t reboot at all. If you’ve run out of things to delete (and you ought to grab WhatSize to see the biggest offenders), it may be time to upgrade to a larger hard drive.

10. Cut off over-eager apps.

force quit appsIf you’re experiencing constant, annoying spinning beach balls and are nowhere near a Dave Matthews concert, the first place to head is the ‘Activity Monitor.’ (Go to Applications>Utilities to find it.) Click on the CPU tab and look to the top of the list to see what is chewing up processing power; select anything unnecessary and hit the red stop sign icon to kill it. If it’s a system process or has an especially funky name — or a “kernel task” — proceed with caution. You may be forced to reboot, but no permanent damage will be done. Another quick fix for stalled applications is clicking on the Apple icon drop-down menu at the top left of the screen and selecting the application that has stopped responding. Or, as we like to call it, “Force Quitting” — not to be confused with “Force Choking.” (Pro tip: If you’re so stuck that even drop-downs won’t respond, try holding Command+Option+Esc for the same function.)

11. Bootstrap your boot up.

login itemsA number of intrusive applications simply love to be the first in line when you start up your Mac, which is often the reason it can take forever. (We’re talking about you, Skype and AIM.) Head to System Preferences>Accounts and select your user name, then click on ‘Login Items.’ Then un-check any applications or services you don’t want to automatically boot when you log in. If you spy any old software or ones you’ll never want, hit the minus button to delete them from the list.

12. Take it outside.

external harddriveIf you do any kind of regular video or audio editing, or even high-level Photoshop, using your internal hard drive to store data will not only fill it quickly, but will also slow it to a crawl. Get a big, high-speed external hard drive (preferably one that runs at 7,200 RPMs or more), and use it as your “scratch disk” for all of that stuff. You’ll be amazed at how much faster your Mac runs, and how much space you’ll save on your hard drive.

13. Thin out iPhoto.

thin out iphotoApple’s photo-organizing software is notorious for being a hard drive filler. Not only does it duplicate any photo or movie you drag to it, it also keeps an original of every photo you modify as well as the modified version. Multiply this by a few thousand photos (each a few megabytes) and you’re looking at tens of gigs of wasted space. Manually going through them all is a time suck — and will fatally corrupt iPhoto’s library database — so try using software such as ‘Duplicate Annihilator.’ Depending on the size of your library and speed of your Mac, it can literally take a day or two to process everything, but you’ll be amazed by how much space you get back. And be sure to make a backup of your library before any fiddling attempts.

How to Change Dock Icons on a Mac

There are many reasons to change the icons that appear in the Dock on our Mac, and it’s easy enough to do, leaving you no reason to have to stick with the ones that are automatically attached to files and folders. If you want the dock icons to be something more personal to you, to all match a particular theme, or just have a change of pace, you only need to change the actual icon for that particular app or folder. It’s that easy,Free Icon Sets are found all over the web. The particular one I’m using for this piece was found at Icon Drawer. Initiate the download as you would with any other download, making sure you follow the usage rules laid out on the site.

I want to change my Pictures Folder icon to being black and blue like the logos surrounding it. It’s not even clear looking at this which one it is. Currently it’s the top one shown here and showing the contents of the folder. I’m going to both change the icon, and change this setting so that it shows the icon, and not the contents.

The first thing I need to do is select the new file that contains the new logo. Instead of opening it, though, I go to the FIle Menu and pull up “Get Info,” or press Command-I.

From the resulting pop-up, select the tiny icon in the upper left corner and go to the Edit menu and pull up on “Copy,” or press Command-C.

If I clicked on the folder in the dock, it would open it. Instead, I find the application on my hard drive and “Get Info” the same way I did to copy the new logo. This time after I select that small icon in the upper left, I go to the Edit menu and “Paste,” or press Command-P.

To get the change to be reflected in the dock, I need to drag the folder out of the dock and replace it with the changed folder. I still see the contents of the folder, though, and that’s because it’s saved as a Stack and not a Folder. To change this, right click on the folder, and change it from Stack to Folder.

It should be noted that not all dock icons can be changed in this manner. The icons that ship with the Mac OS, such as iTunes, Mail, etc., are set so that you can’t simply copy and paste it away. You will need a program such as CandyBar to do that. However, that application comes with a $29 pricetag.

How you can Cure “End of File Error” in Mac System

Occasionally, even the advanced Mac program behaves quite abruptly, taking our valuable information right into a state of reduction or total inaccessibility. You might see that after a long break or following a restart following any normal anti-virus update, the text file you were operating doesn’t open. It just flashes a strange error message around the display and your essential information within the file turns into completely inaccessible. This kind of scenario can lead to the reduction of massive individual or company reduction, when you have not insured the file. In such situation, nonetheless you are able to recover the information back by operating any Mac file recovery software.

Let us talk about the case of the accounts individual, who has been making a chart with all of the calculations of the financial year and about to present the issues before the board of directors inside a day or two. All of a sudden he could not have the ability to access the file. Though he might get the individual information back, his evaluation, reports and statistics would all be gone in the event the file gets lost. The error message, he received might be read as beneath:

“End of file error”

Causes of the error
The Mac OS generates the error if the finish with the file marker is lacking or broken. This means that the end-of-file could not be reached, as defined by the end of file marker within the text document. This issue could be the result of an sudden closing of the software while conserving the file. The error can also occur during conserving, printing or launching the software.

Resolution:

To be able to correct the issue, you need to move the Apple Works preferences file of your Mac system from its location and restart the program. For that just visit the Program Folder and move the preferences file towards the desktop prior to restarting. Do not delete the file until you get rid of the problem. This may create a new preference file, which may correct the problem.

A lot of the time, this process resolves the issue together with your Mac OS. But, in the event you failed to cure the issue and recover your data back, you can usually opt for any Mac data recovery software to retrieve your inaccessible data back.

These Mac recovery utilities are incredibly potent to recover your information back under any instance of information loss or inaccessibility. Over all, they’re absolutely read-only in nature and recover the lost data without altering the initial file or folder.

Tags: Error, end of file error, mac file recovery, resolve

Enhanced Mac Recovery Utility to Recover Your Data From Any Troubled iMac

Among many offerings of Apple, iMac is really a range of Macintosh desktop computer systems. Apple has introduced iMac in late 90s and because then, this all-in-one Mac system has evolved via 5 distinct types. With many advanced functions and functionalities, iMac continues to be the center of fascination of many Mac customers. Occasionally, users encounter sudden freezing of iMac. This might occur within the mi

Mac OS X logo

ddle of watching a film, browsing Internet or transferring files from any external media.

Beneath this kind of situations, the consumer doesn’t discover any choice other than hard boot to get to normalcy. But, following such a process of freezing and hard boot, occasionally, iMac both stops responding with the grey wheel or simply halts in the booting screen, leaving all of your data inaccessible. This kind of a situation could be handled with a Mac recovery utility to deliver the inaccessible information back.

You may ponder over the incidence that the Mac program was just operating fine before a tough boot and never responding now. There can be a quantity of feasible factors behind exactly the same. It could be a virus/malware attack, a corruption towards the file system, operating program malfunction or may be some contradiction with any other set up application. But, at the finish of it, the one factor that arrives into your mind is that the data within the Mac hard generate is completely inaccessible and also you need to perform any Mac information recovery operation to retrieve back again the data.

Amongst all this panic of loosing valuable data, one soothing fact is the fact that what ever be the cause behind the information loss, your information through the media is by no means gets permanently lost. The information is quite safe and lies nearly because it is someplace within the media memory until that is being overwritten by another information. Hence, in the event you can guard your information against becoming overwritten, you have sufficient chance of recovering the same.

These information recovery Mac software program are developed with various revolutionary algorithms to research with the Mac OS X primarily based media and retrieve the data back. These superior Mac recovery software program are totally read-only in their recovery operations and you need not have to worry just a little for just about any type of data erasing or modification. Moreover, with wealthy graphical consumer interface and well explained directions, any user with out getting a lot technical information can also have the ability to make use of the software without any other assistance.

Stellar Phoenix Macintosh Information Recovery is really a highly appreciable Mac recovery utility, which may help you recover your lost, deleted, formatted or inaccessible information from the Mac OS based drives under any instance of information reduction. The software program is compatible with Mac OS X 10.3.nine, 10.4, 10.five, ten.6 and is absolutely risk-free in its recovery operations.file recovery mac

Tags: Mac recovery utility, recover your data, iMac, apple

Disk Utility Failure Mainly because of to Significant Disk Damage

Mac OS X logo

Every running system faces some kind of issues that allow it to be unusable, no matter how stable and potent the running program is. Even probably the most dependable operating system Mac OS X can face problems that will lead to data reduction. To be able to handle this kind of scenarios, to prevent data loss, and needs of Mac information recovery software program; Mac includes Disk Utility software.

Though Disk Utility is a powerful utility that is able to handling a number of issues with Mac OS X hard drive, however, there’s no guarantee that it will work in all cases of system failure. There are some situations where Disk Utility may fail with the subsequent error-

“The underlying job documented failure”

Subsequent towards the above error message, when you check the Disk Utility log, it exhibits “-9972″ error code. The error code – 9972 signifies the volume’s disk construction is broken and cannot be verified/fixed through the tool.

Cause

The above error happens due to severe corruption to the disk construction or even the file program. Corruption can occur due to numerous reasons, like virus infection, improper system shutdown, consumer error, and disk information construction damage. Disk Utility cannot handle significant damage and you have to use other Mac recovery techniques to fix the issue.

Solution

Try out the beneath techniques to sort out this behavior-

Use fsck command via Terminal to repair mac volume. You must run the fsck command in single consumer mode. Alternatively you can also begin the command from a different tough generate quantity.

Use third-party system utility to fix your Mac OS X hard drive. You are extremely recommended to create a total backup of one’s significant data to prevent data reduction and need of Mac data recovery due to any conflict.

If none of the over methods work, you will need to perform ‘Erase and Install’ set up of Mac OS X operating system. Although, it resolves the problem, but also deletes all of the information from tough generate.

To perform information recovery Mac in this kind of cases, Mac file recovery software are required. The file recovery Mac software program utilizes superior HFS recovery algorithms to successfully recover Mac information.

HFS recovery software program lets you recover Mac files on your own, as of their highly-interactive consumer interface. Mac data recovery software program preserves absolute integrity of your information with read-only conduct.

Tags: Disk utility failure, disk destruction, Mac OS X, HFS recovery software

Mac Applications

There are thousands of software applications available for your Mac, from Apple, from third-party developers, and from shareware and freeware developers. We’ll help you pick the best applications for your needs and budget, as well as help you get more out of using them.

  1. Apple Consumer Software (19)
  2. Backup Software (5)
  3. Educational Software (7)
  1. Image Editing Software (7)
  2. System Utilities (9)
  3. Graphics Software (11)

Elgato EyeConnect UPnP Streaming Software for the Mac
EyeConnect Review: The Elgato EyeConnect is a UPnP (Universal Plug ‘n’ Play) streaming server that runs on a Mac and is capable of streaming video, audio, and images to an HDTV via any UPnP or DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) compliant device, such as a Blu-ray player that can stream Internet content.

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