If you’re like me, you cheat a little. You probably use your e-mail address as a username whenever you can (or recycle the same username), re-use the same password depending on the sensitivity of whatever you’re logging into, and save certain passwords on the sites you visit frequently. Let’s not kid ourselves- we know in the back of our minds that this isn’t the best way to do it, but everybody does it anyways. But is there a better way? Can we keep our really sensitive information safe with the same kind of convenience given by saved passwords, recycled usernames, and re-used passwords?

Well in a word, “no,” but we can come close. Password management applications offer a compromise between convenience and security by storing an encrypted database of your usernames and passwords behind one master password.

Enter KeePassX, a cross-platform password manager based on the old Windows Keepass Password Safe. While not as polished as the commercial alternatives like 1Password, KeePassX is no less functional and comes without the rather hefty $39.95 price tag.

The main window of KeyPassX is simple and intuitive- 3 different panes containing the list of password groups, the list of passwords within the active group, and a sort of “card” showing the basic information for each password entry. I’m partial to the 3-column layout of Apple’s Address Book and the various Apple Mail plugins that do the same thing, but that’s a minor issue. Passwords and usernames are blocked out with asterisks, which you can view by opening the entry.

Creating a new entry brings up a window in which you enter a Title, Username, URL, password, and a comment. You can get to the highly customizable password generator from here; which allows you to select the type of characters to include, the length, and various options for character selection. As you can see from the screen shot, nobody is ever going to guess “~pE2%*dp=*K=?W7$J1,Kmo@;|“. You can set a password to expire after a certain amount of time, as well as choose an icon for each entry.

Worried about security?

KeePassX’s databases are stored locally and protected by 256-bit AES or Twofish encryption. Even 128-bit encryption like that used by 1Password would take millions of years to crack via brute-force, so you’ve really got nothing to worry about on that front.

Other nice features of KeePassX are cross-platform database formats and my personal favorite- the ability to use a key file to unlock the database. So if you wanted you could only unlock your database by inserting a USB stick containing the key file.

There are some issues I have with KeePassX.  First of all it’s still in beta (version 0.4.0 as of this writing). While I have not experienced any crashes after a couple days of use, stability is something I consider of paramount importance for a program that handles such sensitive information. While the main screen has a “New Entry” button, a “New Group” button would be nice also. Safari or FireFox integration would be nice, but since it’s open source maybe someone much smarter than I am will create a plugin.  The Settings are a little sparse- for example, it would be nice to be able to make the username visible in the Entry list. Lastly, the program could be a little more robust by offering different categories of entries such as Credit Card numbers and software license information, both of which have fields not necessarily applicable to logins and passwords.

Minor quibbles aside, KeePassX is a promising alternative to storing a text file in an encrypted disk image or shelling out $40 for commercial software. I am very impressed with the program so far, and plan to use it extensively.

Do you know of any other password managers?  Leave a note in the comments.

Locking your screen can take a couple of different forms, but the one I’m going to focus on is fast user switching.  This allows multiple accounts to be “logged in” to your machine with processes running on each account.

To activate fast user switching, you’ll need to be logged into the administrator account on your machine.  Head to System Preferences -> Accounts. At the bottom of the accounts list, you’ll see a “Login Options” button you should press. Check the box that says “Enable fast user switching”. A menu bar item will pop up next to your Spotlight icon that presents a list of accounts you can log into, with your own name greyed out. To switch users just select the account you want from the list and you’ll be taken to the login screen and password prompt.

This is certainly a nice feature to have, but for some of us our menu bars are getting quite crowded.  If you have a long account name, it’s nice to have something more compact.

Enter third-party solutions. Note that all of these do the above steps for you- fast user switching does not have to be enabled for these applications to work.

1. MacLoc

MacLoc, from ourapples software, comes in two flavors; a simple, standard-sized menu (MacLoc ME- for “Menu Edition”) or the traditional MacLoc app you can put in your Dock or on the Desktop.  Free.

2. ScreenLock

Available for download from HandyMacApps, ScreenLock is more or less the same as the standard version of MacLoc.

3. Lock Desktop (Automator)

This is an Automator action available for download on Apple’s Software website. What it does is to lock your desktop by running a simple script. This will keep all applications running, eliminating the hassles of logging out.

Do you have any screen lock options that I left out?  I purposely didn’t include the password prompt when waking from sleep/screensaver because Sleep (obviously) affects system processes.  Leave a note in the comments!

1. Disk Inventory X

Disk Inventory X was one of the first drive-visualization programs for OS X, released initially in 2004.  It’s getting a bit long in the tooth in terms of code optimization for the current generation of Macs (it’s not UB, and the current release is dated October 2005.  There is a beta UB version, but I stuck with full releases for this overview) but it still does it’s job perfectly well.

In addition to a “global” view of your entire system, you can also highlight directories in the navigation pane on the left.  The directory’s graphical representation is highlight on the right, and you can “Zoom In” to get a better picture of the relative file sizes.  This is obviously a very handy feature, but I find it poorly implemented simply because indexing your entire hard drive before viewing it can take a while (For my 123 GB HD, indexing took about 4 minutes on my 2 GHz MBP).  DIX also gives you a nice little info pane that is basically a compacted version of Finder’s built-in “Get Info” window.  Moving a file to the Trash can be done from the “File” menu.

2. GrandPerspective

GrandPerspective is a similar program that is much more up-to-date than DIX.  Unlike DIX, it gives you the option to view a specific folder before indexing.  For a comparison I inventoried by entire hard drive, which was finished in under 2 minutes.

As you can see, the visualization is very similar to DIX. GP has a nice live highlighting feature that is actually very helpful with navigation.  You can reveal a file in the Finder or move it to the Trash with clicks of a button, and there’s also a zoom in/out feature.  An expanding drawer shows various file metadata including type, path, and size.  You can also change the default color scheme, something I couldn’t figure out how to do in DIX.

3. DaisyDisk

A newer player in the market, DaisyDisk is not free ($20), but offers a cleaner interface, faster indexing (around 1 minute on my machine), and a unique representation of file size. While DIX and GP both opted for a rectangular graphical representation, DaisyDisk uses a radial representation.  Directories all get their own “slice” of the circle, with higher level directories towards the center. Clicking on a piece of the pie zooms in. Right clicking beings up a menu with the option to reveal the file in the Finder.

DaisyDisk is certainly visually appealing (the interface takes a little getting used to, but it’s actually pretty neat), but there are a few things that make me scratch my head.  Why is there no way to delete a file from the program itself?  Why make users go through the extra step of revealing it in the Finder?  The information presented is limited to the name of the file and its size.  More metadata could certainly be presented.

Update: The DaisyDisk Team has informed us that file deletion from within the application is coming soon and will be available in a free update. They also inform us that more file metadata is available by highlighting the file in DD and pressing Space.

4. Finder

Lastly, if you just want to get the size of a group of items in the Finder (instead of just a single file), highlight the files you want and press “Command + Option + I.”  A small window pops up with the aggregate file size of the items you selected.

This is not a well-documented keyboard shortcut, but one of the most useful in my opinion.

Do you have any other hard disk visualization programs you like to use?  Leave them in the comments.

You might think hourly backups are a bit excessive. Apple does not give you a convenient way to change the default backup schedule. Luckily this is easy. Here are two ways you can change the hourly backup schedule to one of your choosing.

Modifying the system files

If you just want to change the default interval and not schedule anything fancy, follow this method.

Warning: this tutorial involves modifying System files. As always, be sure to make copies of the original files before changing anything.

1. Navigate to

/System/Library/LaunchDaemons

You’ll see a list of .plist files. Scroll until you see com.apple.backupd-auto.plist

2. Make a copy of this file somewhere else on your hard drive.

3. Verify that you (as an administrator of your machine) can Read and Write to this file. Highlight com.apple.backupd-auto.plist and “Get Info” (Command + I). If you don’t see “admin – Read & Write” or “[your username] Read & Write” you’ll need to add yourself to the list.

4. Open this file with a text editor. Property List Editor doesn’t let me save any changes for some reason.

5. In a text editor, find the lines

<key>StartInterval</key>
<integer>3600</integer>

Change 3600 to the amount of time you want between backups in seconds.

6. Save and you’re finished.

Time Machine Editor

Another way to manage your Time Machine backups is the very handy TimeMachineEditor utility. In addition to changing the default backup interval, it allows you to dictate your hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly backup schedules with a very high level of detail.

Assign the rules you want and then click “Apply.”

TimeMachineEditor is free.

Do you have any other methods you use to increase Time Machine’s functionality? Leave them in the comments!

1. Control + F3

Press Control + F3 (If you are on a laptop you’ll need to hold the Fn key as well) to highlight the Dock. You can then use the arrow keys to navigate to the Window you want to un-minimize and press Enter. This is the best free and native solution, but it is a little clumsy (especially on laptops) and potentially involves a lot of keystrokes if you have a large Dock.

2. Spotlight

Press Command + Space to bring up Spotlight. Type the name of the Application you want to bring back from the dock and highlight the name of the app under the “Applications” header and press Enter (often it will also be the “Top Hit”). Note that this only seems to work consistently with Apple Apps (iTunes, Mail, etc.). Third-party app support for this method is inconsistent- for example with Firefox it will only un-minimize the last window you minimized.

3.Command + Tab

Press Command + Tab to bring up the application-switch box. Command-Tab to the application you want, and before you release the Command button, hold Option. Release both keys. This method will only open the last window you minimized, and support for third-party apps is inconsistent.

4. Quicksilver

Download Quicksilver (free) from Blacktree Software.

The default for entering a command is Control + Space, after which you type in the name of the Application you want to un-minimize. Again this has its limitations- there is no option to choose which window you want to open and it only un-minimizes the last window you minimized.

5. Witch

The best solution is unfortunately not freeware, but if you really want to put this issue to rest, Witch from ManyTricks (the same developers that brought you Name Mangler) is by far the best solution. Witch is like Command-Tab but for windows instead of applications, and can cycle between all the windows you might have minimized at a given time regardless of what Application they belong to. While we don’t usually recommend non-freeware programs, the $16 cost is well worth it if you use a lot of windows and don’t like to leave your keyboard.

Do you have any other ways of un-minimizing a window once it’s trapped in the Dock? Leave a comment!

Here is a simple trick to default your search to Google.com, regardless of which country you are in.

On your browser’s URL bar, if you typed in google.com, it will redirect to your country local domains (such as google.fr or google.ch).

To search on Google.com, you just have to type in http://www.google.com/ncr and google.com will automatically appear. For your info, the ‘ncr’ refers to No Country Redirect.

A good thing about this is that you don’t have to type in ‘google.com/ncr’ everytime you want to search in Google. The first time you go to google.com/ncr page, Google will set a cookie in your browser and make all your future searches default to google.com. This means that you only need to go to www.google.com/ncr once and you will be able to search Google.com right from your Firefox’s search bar (at the top right corner) at all time.

Get your Google local domain back

You just need to clear your cookie and your Google local domain will show up the next time you type in Google.com.

Automator

Batch renaming in Automator is quite simple, even if you’ve never used it before.

1. Open Automator, choose “Custom” when the screen prompts you to select a starting point.
2. Drag the Automator action “Get Specified Finder Items” to the right-hand window pane.
3. Drag the Automator action “Rename Finder Items” to the right-hand window pane.

Note: You will be prompted to add a “Copy Finder Items” action.  If you want to be safe you could add this as well, but I usually don’t.

With Automator you can change the file name in the following ways:

• Date/Time
• Text
• Change Case
• Make Sequential
• Replace Text
• Name Single Item

The options are fairly self-explanatory, but there are some limitations.

Date/Time- you can only add a date or a time stamp, but not both.  The stamp can only be added at the beginning or end of the file name.

Text- You can only add text at the beginning or end of the file name.

Change Case- You can only change the entire file name or extension at once.  You can’t, for example, change moscow.jpg to Moscow.jpg.

Make Sequential- You can only add a sequence at the beginning or end of a file name.

Replace Text- This is where I think Automator really falls short.  You can only replace a specific string, meaning the file name has to contain what you want to replace in order for Automator to do anything. What if I wanted to remove the last 3 characters from a file name and replace it with “xyz”?  Not in Automator.

Name Single Item- I don’t know why you wouldn’t just change the name of the file in Finder without launching Automator, but for completeness the feature is included. You can change the base name (file name without extension), full name (file name with extension), or extension only.

- Choose which action you want and adjust the parameters of the action to suit your needs.

- Drag the Finder items to be renamed into the proper Window.
(Note: with “Get Specified Finder Items“, Automator will not distinguish between directories and files when running.  If you want to drag a folder into Automator and have it work on the folder’s contents, use “Get Folder Contents.”)

- Press “Run.”

Automator is included with OS X and is located in the Applications directory by default.

Name Mangler

Name Mangler picks up where Automator falls short. While Automator has a wealth of other actions that you might find useful, Name Mangler does one thing and does it well.

To rename files, drag them into the left-hand window pane. The list of files pops up, and you can select filters (Folders, Folder Contents, Files) to dictate what gets renamed. This also means you can just drag a Folder into NM to rename the contents.

NM offers the following default options:

• Find and Replace- includes regular expression matching and an option to preserve extensions and ignore case.
• Number Sequentially- Allows you to number in steps other than one, set a prefix and suffix, keep or remove the original name and extension.  Unlike Automator, NM allows you to define a prefix or suffix to the sequence.
• Change Case- Allows Capitalization, all capitals, or all lowercase.  Allows similar preservation or changing of extensions.
• Set Extension- fairly self-explanatory.
• Add Prefix/Suffix- again, self-explanatory.
• Remove/Insert Characters- this is where NM really has an advantage over Automator.  You can remove any number of characters from a file name and specify an index to start with.  So for example if you had a series of files named
  Lyrics_ACT01_Maria.txt
  Lyrics_ACT01_Tonight.txt
  Lyrics_ACT02_TheRumble.txt
  Lyrics_ACT02_Somewhere.txt

  You could remove the “ACTXX” characters very easily by defining the number of characters to be removed (5) and the index to start removing at (8- the 8th character from the beginning, starting at 1).  Furthermore, you can replace those same characters by inserting text at a specified index.  Instead of “ACTXX” I might want “WestSideStory.”  To make things even more customizable, you can specify whether the index should count from the beginning or the end of the file name.

But perhaps the most powerful feature included with Name Mangler is the ability to thread together multiple functions in the “Advanced” window. It’s name conversion description language allows you to write pseudo-scripts to tailor your file names to what you want. It might seem a little daunting, but it’s actually very easy for even a beginner with no programming knowledge to pick up the basics after reading the documentation.

Finally, Name Mangler allows you to save your settings as droplets so you can just drag and drop a collection of files to be renamed without actually launching the program.

I use Name Mangler almost exclusively at this point and haven’t found anything that even begins to compare.  Do you know of other free batch renaming utilities?

I find Leopard’s sidebar to be a very handy place to store my most frequently used folders and as a way to access any external or USB drives I have plugged in at the moment.  What I can’t stand, however, are the obnoxious capitalized categories (DEVICES, PLACES, etc.) that Apple forces upon us. Let’s change those to normal capitalization.

Before going any further, I must warn you that while this particular example is very easy, in general you should not change files in the System Folder.  While working through this tutorial, pay attention to what you can and cannot change.  Keep backups of the original files before editing them.  Do not add carriage returns (pressing the “enter” key in the middle of a line), delete or add any type of special character (any of the following: % ^ ; / = * ), or change spacing. MakeTechEasier is not responsible for any damage you do to your system.

To begin, log in to the administrator account on your Mac and navigate to

/System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj

either by clicking through the hierarchy** or pressing Command + Shift + G and copying the path from above. If you navigate manually, once you find the Finder in /System/Library/CoreServices you’ll need to right click and “Show Package Contents.”

Locate the file called LocalizableCore.strings, and make a copy of this file before you do any editing.  Store it in a place you can remember (like the Desktop).

Open LocalizableCore.strings in your favorite text editor. I use BBEdit, but TextEdit (included with OS X) or TextWrangler (BBEdit’s little brother, free) will work just fine.

You’re presented with a list in which each line has two entries in quotes separated by an equals sign. On the left are the variable names used by the system.  DO NOT TOUCH THESE. On the right are the strings that those variables pass to the user interface.  These are what we’ll be editing.

Find the line

"SD5" = "DEVICES";

(It’s line 50)

You can change “DEVICES” to whatever you want.  I chose “Devices.”  You can do the same thing to SD6-SD8, but remember not to change any values on the left-hand side of the equal sign.

Save your changes and enter your administrator password when prompted. You need to Relaunch Finder for the changes to take effect; Hold down Option and right-click on Finder in Dock and choose “Relaunch” or launch Terminal.app and type in

killall Finder

followed by the enter key.

¡Viola! You now have unobtrusive sidebar categories in Finder.

Now let’s change the sidebar categories in iTunes.

Navigate to

/Applications/iTunes.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj

(Note: if you have moved iTunes to a different directory besides /Applications/ you’ll need to put in the correct path.)

Make a copy of Localizable.strings before doing anything.

Open Localizable.strings in a text editor.

The sidebar category strings are located in the lines with variable names 135.011-135.014 (file lines 189-192).  Again I changed mine so they looked less obnoxious, but you’re free to put in whatever you want.

Save your changes and relaunch iTunes for the changes to take effect.

I could not figure out how to change the sidebar capitalization in Apple Mail.  If anyone knows how, let me know and I’ll update the tutorial (as well as be eternally grateful).