Make Tech Easier » Mac

Mobile Media Converter: A Cross-platform No-Brainer Media Converter

Damien — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:39:29 +0000

Fancy a media converter that works in all Operating Systems and supports most of the widely used multimedia format? Look no further, Mobile Media Converter could just be the one for you.

The Mobile Media Converter (MMC) is a free video and audio converter for converting between popular desktop media formats like MP3, Windows Media Audio (wma), Ogg Vorbis Audio (ogg), Wave Audio (wav), MPEG video, AVI, Windows Media Video (wmv), Flash Video (flv), QuickTime Video (mov) and commonly used mobile devices/phones formats like AMR audio (amr) and 3GP video. iPod/iPhone and PSP compatible MP4 video are also supported.

Simple UI, great functionality

One thing that I like about MMC is that it is simple in design and does not contain any extra stuffs to misled its users. Regardless you are using Windows, Linux or Mac, you will get the same interface throughout. There is a +/- button for you to add/remove file(s), a button to select the output destination, a dropdown bar to select the output format and a Convert button to start the conversion. That’s it.

Its simple design is by no mean an indication of a lack of functionality. On the contrast, it is packed with plenty of features that you will find it useful.

Supports a variety of media formats

Be it video or audio formats, MMC has covered it all. It is able to convert between the commonly used formats, such as OGG, MP3, WMA, WMV, MP4 WAV, AVI etc. Unless you are using a device that required a special codec, MMC should have you covered.

Batch conversion

MMC supports batch conversion of videos/audios. Simply add a bunch of videos/songs to the application and it will batch convert them and save them all in the same folder.

Advance setting

Most of the time, you won’t have need for this, but if you are keen to change the output bitrate, codec, channel, size etc, then this is the place to go to.

Youtube downloader

We have previously covered several Youtube downloader desktop apps. Here’s another one to add to your collection.

The best part about this is that after downloading the Youtube video, you can convert it to the format that you want, or just to extract the mp3 track in the video. This is great if you just want to get the music out of the video.

Trim/crop

If you think that is all, then you are wrong. MMC also allows you to trim/crop your video before converting. One thing though, this functionality is hidden on its interface and you have to perform extra steps to edit the video.

On the Video entry, right click your mouse. You should now see the options to Trim/Crop. The Trim function is for you to determine the start and end length of the converted video while the Crop feature allows you to change the aspect ratio of the video.

Suggestions for Improvement

One thing that I found lacking is the ability to stop the operation once the conversion start. While testing this out, I accidentally clicked the Convert button and the conversion starts without showing a prompt. Neither does it provide a Cancel button for me to stop the operation. I have two choices: wait for 30 minutes for the conversion to complete or to kill the application completely. I choose the latter. It will be great if it stop the operation in mid-way.

Another thing that is lacking is the support for subtitle files. For converting movie to iPhone format, until it supports adding of subtitle files to the video, I will still stick with my XviD4PSP . Other than that, this is one of the best media converter that I have come across so far.

What do you think?

Image credit: Houkwing

Mobile Media Converter

Mobile Media Converter: A Cross-platform No-Brainer Media Converter originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Mac: Load Flash only when you want to with Clicktoflash

Sharninder — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 13:23:00 +0000

Adobe’s Flash technology is pretty much THE standard when it comes to delivering video over the Internet. A number of high profile sites like YouTube, hulu and metacafe use flash to display content to their users and the flash plugin is quickly becoming a must have for every computer user.

Flash is not being used just for videos, it is also used around the Internet for creating casual games, advertisements and pretty much anything that you can think of.

In spite of all the advantages of the Flash platform, the problem with flash is that other than Windows, it really doesn’t run well on any other platform. Flash is also a notoriously heavy user of your system’s resources.

If you’re a Linux or OS X user like I am, you can forget about timely updates and can also expect your browser’s memory and CPU usage to go through the roof if you like visiting flash heavy websites. In my opinion, that is reason enough to get rid of Flash.

So, what do you do if you’ve had enough of the flash advertisements and videos making an appearance on every website that you visit ?

You give ClickToFlash a try !

ClickToFlash is an extension for Safari on OS X that blocks Flash from appearing on any site that you visit. With ClickToFlash loaded, this is how a site using flash will look like.

So, what’s the great deal about ClickToFlash, you ask ? You could have gotten rid of flash by just removing the flash plugin, right ? And to block advertisements, there are already some excellent freeware out there.

Well, I agree, but with ClickToFlash you don’t have to remove the flash plugin and that is the flexibility that it provides. The flash plugin will not be loaded up with every page you view of YouTube, for example, but you can still see the flash elements on the web page, if you want to, by just clicking on the element. So, to start playing the YouTube video above you can just click anywhere inside the gray area and the video will start playing.

Infact, in the case of YouTube, ClickToFlash also gives you an option to view the higher quality the H.264 video stream using QuickTime instead of Flash. Just right click the inside the gray area and select the H.264 option.

Isn’t that awesome ?

But, if you’re a heavy flash user, the constant clicking required to view the content on all your favorite sites might annoy you a bit. In that case, ClickToFlash provides an option to add certain websites to a Whitelist.

A Whitelist is a list of all websites which ClickToFlash excludes from blocking. Adding a site to the Whitelist is easy too, just right click the flash element on the particular site and select the Add to Whitelist option, as you can see in the image above.

ClickToFlash will then add the site’s URL to it’s Whitelist and the next time you visit that site, you’ll be able to enjoy all flash content as if ClickToFlash never happened to you ! I can already see myself making use of this feature for atleast a couple of sites.

So, do you guys find flash videos and ads annoying ? Have you ever though of ways to get rid of them ?

Note: A similar plugin for Firefox is Stop Autoplay

Mac: Load Flash only when you want to with Clicktoflash originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

How to Install and Test Wordpress on Your Mac

Sharninder — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:18:58 +0000

Wordpress is without a doubt the most popular blogging platform around. Not only is it a good piece of software but what makes it the best tool for the job is the awesome community that is associated with development of not only the Wordpress core software, but also the various themes and plugins.

For all it’s simplicity, a lot of people still shy away from using Wordpress because installing and maintaining it requires a certain level of technical knowhow. Specifically, the knowledge of installing and managing a PHP/MySQL stack and dealing with all the problems that can happen with a botched Wordpress installation.

So, without further ado, we’ve written this post that’ll not only teach you how to install a complete PHP/MySQL stack on your Mac but also teach you to install and configure a fully functional Wordpress install, all without leaving the comforts of your own computer.

MAMP, which stands for Mac-Apache-MySQL-PHP and is an all-in-one solution for people who do not want the hasle of installing and configuring the individual components on their system.

Follow the download link on the MAMP site to get hold of the latest DMG image and double click the image to mount it in the Finder. The download is a bit heavy at about 170 MB but it will be totally worth it … trust me.

One of the best things about OS X is the ease with which software can be installed. To install MAMP in your system just drag the MAMP icon to the Applications folder.

Double click the MAMP icon to launch control panel.

MAMP will automatically start the Apache web server and the MySQL database server and also launch an instance of your default browser to tell you that everything is working fine.

Keep this window open – We’ll need it in a while.

MAMP also bundles a version of phpMyAdmin along with the complete PHP/MySQL stack.

phpMyAdmin is a web based software to manage MySQL databases and we’ll use that to create a database for our Wordpress install.

Click on the phpMyAdmin link in the browser, and when it loads up in your browser, give a name for the new database and press the Create button.

That was probably the easiest MySQL install I’ve ever done.

Now that we have all the infrastructure in place for Wordpress, head over to the Wordpress website and download the latest version of the software.

Unzip the file that you just downloaded into the htdocs folder inside the MAMP folder – /Applications/MAMP/htdocs.

You should now see a wordpress folder inside htdocs. Browse to this folder and open the file named wp-config-sample.php using a text editor.

In this file, find the lines which say:

‘DB_NAME’ – replace ‘putyourdbnamehere’ with ‘the name of the database that you created’
‘DB_USER’ – replace ‘usernamehere’ with ‘root’
‘DB_PASSWORD’ – replace ‘yourpasswordhere’ with ‘root’

Save the file and rename it to ‘wp-config.php’ from ‘wp-config-sample.php’.

Now, open this address in your browser – http://localhost:8888/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php.

Follow the wizard and at the end of it, use the temporary password that the wizard created for you to login to your shiny new Wordpress Install. That’s it ! You now have a fully functional Wordpress install on your computer to play with all the themes and plugins that you want.

How to Install and Test Wordpress on Your Mac originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Amaya: A Simple, Yet Useful Alternative to Dreamweaver

Shevonne — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:00:10 +0000

While on a project, where money was scarce, we were scrambling around looking for a free or open source HTML editor that can provide us the same functionality as Adobe Dreamweaver. During my analysis of the different HTML editor out there, I came across Amaya. What intrigued me about it was that it was created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). As someone who loves Dreamweaver, I thought that I would never find something comparable to it that was free (open source), but I was wrong.

Amaya is an open-source HTML editor created by the W3C. If you don’t already know, W3C is an international community that develops Web standards. It was founded by Tim Berners-Lee, who is credited as inventing the World Wide Web. In 1998, Amaya was invented. Since then, there have been various releases that have given more functionality to Amaya.

Amaya is the most user-friendly HTML editor that I have come across. One of its features that is very similar to Dreamweaver is that you are able to split the screen to view the visual editor and the HTML code. In this way, you are able to code while seeing the changes, or you can do the other way around. It’s a great way to learn HTML, if you don’t know already. On the sidebar, you are able to easily modify the HTML, like in Adobe Dreamweaver. Different profiles can change the way they see the sidebar displayed.

Another great feature is the CSS functionality. With the press of a button, you are able to create a CSS stylesheet. You do not have to know CSS in order to create one, which is great for people trying to learn CSS and/or if you are trying to design a stylesheet quickly. This is a great way to have your site’s formatting and style be in a different file than the HTML code. It provides a way to add flexibilty to your web site/blog. It also has a debugger to check your code for errors.

One good thing about Amaya is that it allows five different user editing profiles, so if someone wants to change the behavior of the Amaya tool, he/she can have his/her own profile that is different from someone else. In addition, Amaya runs on Linux, Mac, and/or PC, so regardless which OS you are using, you will be able to use Amaya for your coding project.

What’s can be improved on?

Amaya is a quick and neat HTMl editor. I couldn’t find any issues, except that it needs to keep up with the new technologies. For instance, it isn’t made to build smartphones apps, which I saw in other free HTML editors. It also doesn’t support Ajax, which is being used more and more.

When it comes to features, Amaya is definitely not on par with Dreamweaver, but if you are looking for a free, simple, and useful HTML editor, then Amaya is a good candidate.

Have you use Amaya before? Tell us what you like/dislike about it.

Amaya: A Simple, Yet Useful Alternative to Dreamweaver originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Afloat 2.2 Adds Support For Snow Leopard and New Features

Damien — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:32:00 +0000

When Snow Leopard was launched, many applications broke because of compatibility issue. Afloat was one of them (mainly due to the plugsuit issue). The good news is, Afloat 2.2 was launched to patch up the issue. Now you can get Afloat running smoothly in Snow Leopard.

For those who have not heard of Afloat, it is an useful software that you can use to keep an application window “always on top” of all other windows. One thing for sure, Afloat 2.2 brings some new features that are not available in previous version.

Make windows appear in all spaces

If you are a great fan of Spaces in Mac, then you are going to love this feature. If you are working on a project and have several application opened in different spaces, instead of traversing between spaces to access your data, you can make the application window follow you around, without you having to do the manual work.

Resize windows easily

The usual way of resizing an application window in Mac is to move your mouse to the right bottom corner of the window and drag to resize. With Afloat 2.2, you can now press Ctrl + Command + right mouse click to resize the window from anywhere inside the window region.

Move window around without dragging the title bar

By pressing Ctrl + Command + left mouse click, you can move the window around easily and quickly (similar to the Alt + left mouse click feature in Linux Compiz).

Pin to the desktop

You can also pin a window to the desktop and make it persistent. With this feature turn on, even the “Show Desktop” command will not hide the window.

Existing functionality

For those who are new to Afloat, here are some of the functionality that existed since version 1

Afloat: keep the window “always on top”. Accessible via the shortcut key Ctrl + Command + A or via the Window menu. (Note: the shortcut key don’t work in Preview)

Add transparency to windows: Press Ctrl + Command + mouse wheel scroll to change the transparency of the window. This is useful if you just want to take a quick peek at the windows beneath.

Make window an overlay: This turns a window into an overlay. When this mode is on, it will not respond to any mouse click or keyboard entry.

One thing to note: Afloat does not work with all applications. It only works for Cocoa based applications, such as Safari, Preview, iChat etc. Carbon based applications like iTunes and Finder do not get the love.

Afloat 2.2 Adds Support For Snow Leopard and New Features originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

TonidoPlug: Your Personal Cloud Server in a Plug

Damien — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 23:47:39 +0000

Putting all your stuffs and confidential data on the cloud may seems like a good idea as it allows you to access to them anytime, anywhere. However, it can become a totally bad decision when the security of the cloud server is compromised or the third party providers wind up their services and all your data gone down with them. When such things happen, you might wonder why you have not heard of Tonido earlier.

Tonido is a free software that turns your desktop into a personal server and allows you to access and share your files, media, calendar and apps from everywhere. Be it Windows, Mac or Linux, you simply install the software and have your own personal cloud server up and running in no time. Forget all the complicated stuffs you have heard about creating your own server. There are no technical skills required to set up and run Tonido. The best thing is – all the data resides in your own computer and there is no need to worry about security or even data loss (unless your own computer crashes).

Introducing TonidoPlug

On the other hand, if all your important data resides on your external backup drive and you wish to have your own cloud server running at all times without having to turn on your computer everytime, then TonidoPlug is the one for you.

TonidoPlug is the hardware version of Tonido. It is a tiny, low power, low cost home server and NAS device powered by Tonido software. It comes with its own RAM and CPU (and preinstalled with Ubuntu). All you need to do is to plug it into the power socket and there you are, a server ready at your beckoning. It integrates nicely with all the features found in the Tonido software and allows you to access your files, music, pictures from anywhere.

Setting up TonidoPlug

Once you have connected up the respective cables (there are only 3 cables that you need to connect: the power cable, LAN cable and the USB cable), power it up. On any computer that are linked to the home network, go to the URL: http://tonidoplug.com/ip. This will detect your Tonido Plug. In some cases where it doesn’t detect, you can enter the MAC address (at the back of the plug) to get it identified by the network.

Once the plug is detected, you will have to create a new profile for the Tonido. Those who already have an existing profile can use this method to import them into the Plug.

In the dashboard, you will find the exact same interface as the Tonido. The software available in TonidoPlug is as follow:

Many of these apps should be familiar to already Tonido users, (Jukebox, Photos, Search, Thots, Workspace). The newer apps are WebsharePro, Torrent, Explorer and Plug Admin.

Here’s a quick summary of these applications.

WebsharePro: All the power of Tonido Webshare, plus the ability to upload, setting upload quotas for users, zip downloads, viewing currently downloading lists, change thumbnail and photo slide show image size
Torrent: Download Torrent files to your plug and control torrents via your web browser from anywhere
Explorer: Web based File manager and browser that allows common file operations like rename, delete, copy files and folders and even uploads
Plug Admin: Manage your TonidoPlug hardware, recover Tonido Profile passwords, Manage attached USB drives, Share USB drives over the network for access, Monitor CPU loads etc

If you are not in your own home networks, you can also connect to your TonidoPlug via the public URL: http://yourprofilename.tonido.com:10001.

In addition, TonidoPlug is also a DLNA device, which means you are able to connect to your PS3, Xbox, or even XBMC software and stream music over the cloud.

The Tonido software is free to download and use, but the TonidoPlug comes at a price of $99.

Considering that most Web servers with the same hardware spec as the TonidoPlug can easily cost you up to $40-50 per month, at a mere price of $99, TonidoPlug is really a great bargain; not to mention the unlimited amount of storage device you can attach to it and the security issue that you never have to worry about. This is really a no-brainer deal.

Note 1: Thanks to Venkat for sending in a test unit for review and providing a prompt support for all my doubts.
Note 2: MakeTechEasier is not affiliated in any way to CodeLathe, the company behind TonidoPlug, nor do we benefit from any sale of TonidoPlug generated from this article.

TonidoPlug: Your Personal Cloud Server in a Plug originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Unlock Hidden Mac OS X Settings With Secrets

Sharninder — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 13:00:41 +0000

Mac OS X is a wonderful operating system with one of the best and easiest to use graphical interface among mainstream operating systems. It is amazing to see how much thought the designers of the OS have put into each element of the interface striving all the while to make it easier for the user to use the computer without bringing in any complexity, and retaining the ability to configure the computer as the user wishes.

But, there is still so much more that OS X is capable of and it is not always possible to harness all that power from the Graphical interface, and that is where our application of the day, Secrets, comes in handy.

Secrets installs in the System Preferences Pane and provides you access to hundreds of hidden OS X settings. Almost all of these settings can be accessed from the command line also and if you’re a regular follower of the Mac OS tips website, Mac OSX Hints, you might have come across some of them earlier. But, with the hundreds of hidden settings that Secrets unlocks, you’re bound to find some that you’ve never come across and will find useful.

To install Secrets, just download the zip file, extract it and double click the Secrets.prefPane file that is a part of the zip archive.

Now, you can just click on the icon in System Preferences and OS X will launch Secrets.

Secrets divides all the settings into various categories that are displayed in a vertical sidebar on the left side of the window. This classification makes it easy to find what you’re looking for. For example, if you want to change the dock style from the default 3D type to the older 2D style dock, just click on Dock in the left sidebar and select the 2D style from the drop down menu under Dock Appearance.

If you follow the popular OS X blogs, you’d recall that this particular setting was widely published for users who wanted to go back to the older Dock style when Apple decided to change the default Dock appearance to the 3D style in OS X 10.5. I, on the other hand, actually like the 3D look more so that’s what I keep.

How about something more useful?

One of the features of OS X that I use most often is Quick Look. This feature lets you quickly preview a document right from the Finder without even opening the document. The feature works even if you don’t have the required application installed, and Apple has been nice enough to bundle plugins for the most common type of documents along with OS X.

I use Quick Look all the time to read Word and Power point documents even though I don’t even have Microsoft Office installed on my system.

By default, if I use Quick Look on a folder all it tells me is the size of the folder and the number of files in it.

The two Finder settings that I like to enable using Secrets is to let Finder display hidden files and enable the Quick Look X-ray folders which enables Quick Look to display thumbnails of all the items inside the folder.

Changing the above settings require you to restart Finder. You can do so by clicking the Quit This button at the bottom of the window.

Now, whenever you use Quick Look to view a folder, you’ll see thumbnail images of all the documents inside the folder. Isn’t that cool ?

Go ahead and use Secrets to customize OS X as you see fit. Let us know which are your favorite Secrets.

Unlock Hidden Mac OS X Settings With Secrets originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Manage your clipboard items in Mac with Shadow

Jeffry Thurana — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:00:33 +0000

I use Cut, Copy and Paste commands a lot, and computer’s basic clipboard ability to hold only one item at a time really annoys me. That’s why one of my must have applications is clipboard manager. It allows me to copy as many items to my heart content without having to worry about losing any entry.

There are several choices of clipboard managers for Mac users. We’ve discussed clipboard managers for Mac before. Jumpcut was my long favorite manager and it’s a pretty amazing one if I may add. It’s small, fast, and it does the job well. True that Jumpcut can only handle text, but my needs are simple.

So it’s a bit hard for me to switch to other application. But Shadow changes everything. It can do everything every other clipboard managers can do, and more.

Let’s peek at what lurks behind the shadow.

First step into the shadow

Just like most of other clipboard managers, Shadow will reside in the menubar. It can be summoned using configurable shortcut key.

To set the key combination, open Shadow preferences menu by clicking the menubar icon and choose “Preferences”.

Go to the “General” tab, click inside the HotKey field and hold down your chosen key combination.

And while you’re at it, why don’t you choose the Advanced tab and click on the “Start on login” button to make sure that your clipboard is available all the time. Here you can also decide how many items that Shadow should hold inside the clipboard.

Please note that even though you can set as many clipboard items as you want, the bigger the number, the bigger space you need to hold the items. So, those with limited hard drive space please beware.

Walk in the shadow

Using Shadow is as simple as letting it running in the background and quietly collecting clipboard items. You could do the usual Cut-Copy-Paste routine: cut or copy an item and directly paste it. But you can also use past cut or copy items to be pasted.

To do this, you have to bring Shadow window upfront (either by clicking its item in the menubar or by using the hotkey),

Choose one of the past items using the up and down arrow, and use Shift + Enter to paste it.

By default, there’s one clipboard that comes with Shadow called “System Clipboard”. You can’t modify nor delete it but you can choose to share it with others by clicking Edit (pencil icon).

However, the Shadow’s true power lies in it’s ability to create multiple clipboards and share them to other computer within the networks. To add more clipboards, open Shadow window and click on the plus (+) button below the window.

A new clipboard options window will appear. Fill in the clipboard name and choose whether you want to share the clipboard to others by ticking the checkbox. There’s also an option to password protect the connection should you need the extra security. The password allows you to choose which clipboard to share to which person.

The ability to store as many items as you want in the clipboard and to add as many clipboards as you want bring about new problem: information overload. When Shadow has stored too many items, using the clipboard will become difficult and impractical.

Luckily Shadow comes with search ability. All you have to do is put the search string, hit Enter, and all the clipboard items that match your query will appear. Choose the one that you need and press Shift + Enter.

Have you tried Shadow? Do you know other free alternatives to clipboard manager for Mac? Share using the comment below.

Manage your clipboard items in Mac with Shadow originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Skitch – Powerful Screen Capture Application for Mac

Jeffry Thurana — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:00:22 +0000

I never thought that I would find screen capture utility as one of my indispensable tool. But I do. So it’ only natural that I keep on searching for the best alternative to fill in my need.

Once I’ve settled with Jing, a nice multi platform screen capture app. Then one of my Mac-user friend recommend Skitch – a Mac only alternative. After trying it out, I was hooked. Skitch has several features that I can’t find in Jing.

Screencapture tool plus image editor

Most of the screen capture utilities that I came across so far is usually limited to one main feature only: making screenshots. Skitch has many more features that complement the screen capturing process.

You could say that this app is also a light image editor because you can use it as one. You could just open any image file and edit it using Skitch. But before we dig deeper into the features, let’s adjust the basic settings.

My first favorite place to visit every time I open any application for the first time is the Preferences. Same thing goes here.

Open Skitch,

Click on the “Tools” menu

and choose Preferences (or hit Command + Comma on the keyboard).

Even though you can spend some time here and adjust many values according to your liking, I think the most important items here is the Snapping settings. Here you will decide what Shortcut keys to use to do Crosshairs (part of the screen), Fullscreen and Frame (adjustable location of part of the screen) snaps.

Now for the main show, let’s see how this app does what it’s built to do: screen capture. The one snap option that I use the most is the crosshairs. Just hit the pre-defined shortcut key and you’ll have the crosshairs lines appear, ready to capture the screen.

You could click and drag the lines to define the part of the screen that you want to capture. Or you could just click on a window and Skitch will capture that window for you.

Then the image that you’ve just capture will be opened in Skitch editor. Here you can do some light editing to enhance the image.

There are basic drawing tools at the left vertical bar such as pencil, rectangle, fill, text, and arrow; there are additional tools at the right vertical bar such as color picker, undo and clear buttons; file name and file info at the bottom bar, webpost button and settings also at the bottom; Settings button, Photos button (to open any image from the hard drive), Save button, and History button (to view recently captured images) are all at the top bar.

To resize image to the size that you desired, drag any corner of the window. To crop the image into the area that you prefer, click and drag the edges of the image.

And finally, to quick save the image, just click and drag the “Drag Me” button at the bottom bar to the location that you’ve want: in finder or in any other application such as Mail or Text Edit.

Now about the name bar at the bottom, you could write the name of the file and decide the image format before dragging it and the image will be saved using that preferences.

Using Skitch, you have the option to save the image into web location. Click the little arrow next to the Webpost button and choose “Open Webpost Settings”

You’ll have the Skitch.com as the default location (registered at the first installation of the app). To add more location, just click the plus button,

And fill in the necessary data according to the types of your account. There are several options here ranging from MobileMe to FTP to Flickr.com.

Final Notes

There are still many other things haven’t been discussed here about Skitch, including the ability to take a snap of itself. The best way to find them out is to explore and use the app yourself.

And as much as I like and prefer Skitch over other screen capturing tools, there’s one thing that I find a little bit annoying: that the only option to save the captured image is by dragging it to our desired location. It would be better if the developer add configurable buttons to save the image to several pre-defined locations in the hard drive (like the one that Jing has).

Sometimes, dragging images could be troublesome. Especially for those who doesn’t have wide area for mousing.

Have you tried Skitch? Do you know other alternative of screen capture tools for Mac? Share using the comment below.

Skitch – Powerful Screen Capture Application for Mac originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

How to create a WiFi Hotspot using Mac OS X

Sharninder — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 12:00:58 +0000

WiFi is pretty ubiquitous these days, with devices that support WiFi and places that offer Internet over WiFi as a service, mushrooming everywhere.

At least that’s what I used to think till about last month when I found myself in a hotel with no WiFi and just one Ethernet port that I was expected to share with two of my friends. Now, we could all do what others at the venue were doing. Sharing the Ethernet port, finish up our work in a given time and hand over the port to the next in line.

Or we could just make one of the computers act as a WiFi hotspot and let the other PCs access the Internet through the first one.

It isn’t too difficult to guess the option that we chose, and for our little setup we decided to use my Mac as the router, since the setup was the easiest on the Mac.

In this post today, I’m going to detail the steps that are needed to share the Internet connection on a Mac effectively turning your Mac into a WiFi router.

Setting up custom network

First of all, you need to create a network of all the computers that are going to share the connection. In networking terms, this is called an adhoc network.

The good thing is that you don’t need to do anything special to create an adhoc network in OS X. OS X will prompt you when it needs to create one, if you’re using the Airport Card (WiFi) for sharing.

To enable Internet Sharing, open System Preferences (Apple -> System Preferences) and click Sharing.

Select Internet Sharing from the list of Services.

From the Drop down menu, select the Interface which is connected to the Internet source and from the list below it, select the interface which you want to share with the other computers. In my case, that was the Ethernet and the Airport (WiFi), respectively.

The third and final step is to create an adhoc network which the other computers can connect to.

Click on Airport Options.

OS X will then prompt you to type in a name for the new network.

Unless you want all the freeloaders in the neighborhood to piggyback on your network, I’d suggest that you select the Enable Encryption option and provide a password for the network.

That’ all there is to it. Click Ok and OS X will enable Internet Sharing on your Mac, from the Ethernet to the Airport Interface.

The only thing left now is to search for a new networks in all the other computers that you want to connect, and our adhoc network should show up in the list. Select and join this network.

All the client machines should now be able to browse the Internet as if they’re directly connected to the Internet over WiFi.

How to create a WiFi Hotspot using Mac OS X originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Three Free RSS Readers for Mac Users

Shevonne — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 12:28:15 +0000

More and more, people are relying on RSS feeds for their way to get their news, videos, audio, etc. An RSS Reader is a must-have for anyone who is reading RSS feeds on a daily basis. It provides a way to organize RSS feeds in a way that makes it easier to manage. Before, I reviewed the top three web-based RSS Readers to use. Now, here are three free desktop-based RSS Readers for Mac users:

1. Shrook

Shrook is a powerful RSS readers that provides you with the capability of accessing and synchronizing your RSS feeds among all your Macs, iPhone, or PCs. This is done by registering an account with shrook.com.

When you first open up the Shrook application, you will see six listing under Source – Subscriptions, Feed Guide, Attachments, Flagged Items, New Items, and Scrapbook.

Subscriptions shows all your RSS feeds that you are currently subscribed to.
Feed Guide provides popular feeds that you might find interesting. It’s a great way to get started if you don’t have any feeds.
Attachments are items, such as podcasts, that are able to downloaded.
Flagged Items are items that you want to save to review later.
New Items are items that you haven’t read yet.
Scrapbook is similar to Flagged Items, except you would use it for items that you have read but want to save.

One of the unique things about Shrook, is that you are able to link it to your iTunes, which is great if you download a podcast. Another great feature is that it gives you the ability to blog about any item in your feed. Overall, Shrook is a very rich RSS feeder that has everything that you would need.

2. NewsFire

NewsFire is a very user-friendly RSS reader that allows even the last tech savvy person the ease of using it. Similar to Shrook, you are able to download podcasts from your RSS feeds into your iTunes.

One of the neat things about NewsFire is that you are able to find out the RSS feed URL of the current site your viewing without having to search for it. Another functionality is that it has a “Smart Feed” feature that allows you to group feeds with a query. It is very similar to the Smart Playlist in iTunes. It’s a great way to group feeds, even new ones that you subscribe to after you create the Smart Feed.

NewsFire is a straightforward RSS Reader that gives you the basic needs in managing your RSS feeds. If you want something simple, then this is the RSS Reader for you.

3. Vienna

Vienna combines the best of both worlds: ease of use and tons of functionality.

When you open up Vienna, it’s has three default folders: Marked Articles, Unread Articles, and Today’s Article. Like Spook the Marked Articles folder is for items that you want to review later. The great thing is the Today’s Articles folder. There are many times where you might just want to view the RSS feeds of that day. This allows you to do that. Your RSS feeds and groups are listed. Vienna also has the ability for you to create Smart folders, similar to NewsFire, that lets you create queries that will automatically group RSS feeds. Like Shrook, it also has blog integration.

Vienna is a great desktop-based RSS Reader that has so many features built into it.

Which RSS readers do you use for your Mac? Share it with us in the comments.

Three Free RSS Readers for Mac Users originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

How to Create a Mac Snow Leopard USB Installer Disk

Damien — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 12:00:53 +0000

All Macs come with a DVD drive that you can use, so in most situations, you won’t have the need for a USB installer disk. However, there can be times when your DVD ROM is spoilt and you need to reformat/upgrade your OS. This is where an USB installer disk comes in handy. In addition, with this USB disk, you can also use it to install Mac OS on a machine without CD-ROM (i.e netbook).

In this tutorial, we will go through the way to create a Snow Leopard USB installer disk.

Requirement

An existing Mac with functional DVD-ROM
Snow leopard installer DVD (upgrade set or box set)
A USB thumb drive of at least 8GB in size

Creating a USB installer disk

1. Plug in your USB drive. Backup all the data in the USB drive.

2. Insert your Snow Leopard Installer DVD into the DVD-ROM.

3. Go to Utility -> Disk Utility. You should see the USB drive and the SL installer DVD entries on the left pane.

4. Select the USB drive. On the right pane, click on the Partition tab.

5. Here are few things that you need to do:

Under the Volume Scheme, select ‘1 Partition‘ from the dropdown
At the Name input field, enter a new name for the partition (I choose to give it the same name as the SL installer DVD).
At the Format field, select Mac OS Extended (Journaled) from the dropdown.

At the bottom, click on the Options button.

Select GUID partition table.

Click Apply. This will repartition and reformat the USB drive.

6. Once it is done, click on the Restore tab. You will see two input field: Source and Destination.

Drag the SL Installer DVD entry to the Source field.

Drag the newly formatted USB entry to the Destination field.

Click Restore.

This will copy the image from the DVD Installer to the USB drive. You can go for a coffee break now as the whole process takes about 30 mins.

When the whole process is done, you will be able to boot and install Snow Leopard from the USB drive.

To boot your Mac from USB, you just need to select the respective entry in System Preferences -> Startup Disk.

How to Create a Mac Snow Leopard USB Installer Disk originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

How to Pause a Process on OS X

Sharninder — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 12:07:55 +0000

So, you’ve just bought a shiny new Apple machine ? It is the fastest machine in the lineup with the max RAM you could afford.

And even that doesn’t stop OS X from throwing that annoying beach ball icon at you right when you’re at your most productive phase of the day?

If the answer to that is yes, read on!

Mac OS X normally is a pretty good multi tasking operating system but like all operating systems, OS X also has it’s limits and while it tries to make maximum use of the RAM and CPU power available to it (and multiple cores, if you’re using a grand central enabled application), there will always be times when you have to face the beach ball.

All current generation of Macs come with a fairly generous amount of RAM so running out of RAM is not that real a problem and if an application still needs to use more RAM than a certain threshold, the operating system’s swap and memory management routines kick in to handle that.

CPU cycles, on the other hand, are always in short supply. If you’re into any kind of multimedia creation or editing, you’d know what I mean.

So, what exactly are your options when an application you’re running starts consuming the CPU like there’s no tomorrow ?

Well, the first option is pretty straightforward. Find the errant application and close it. You can find the CPU usage of all applications by looking at the Activity Monitor.

To kill an application just select it and click the Red Quit Process button. Can’t be easier than that !

The only problem with this approach is that you lose whatever tasks you were doing in that application and there really is no way to get them back unless the application itself has a feature to save your tasks and resume.

But, it turns out that there is another way to deal with this problem.

Mac OS X provides a method by which you can “pause” an application instead of quitting it and then later when you want to get back to it, continue running the application from exactly the point where you left it.

The first thing that you’d need is the process identifier (PID) of the particular process that you want to pause. This is the number given in the first column of the Activity Monitor window. Note down this number. We’ll be using it pretty soon.

Now fire up the Terminal application (From the Applications->Utilities folder) and use the kill command as shown in the screenshot below

Most people think that the Kill command is only used to kill a process on Unix based systems. But, the fact is that this command can be used to send any OS defined signal to an application and STOP is one such signal that Mac OS X defines. What it does is that it stops (or pauses) whatever tasks the applications is performing and takes away control of the CPU from it. Your tasks are still kept in memory and are safe.

kill -STOP <PID>

You can check the status of the process in the Activity Monitor and it should be consuming 0% of the CPU now.

When you’re done with your work and want to get back to the paused process, just use the same kill command to pass another signal, CONT this time, to the process using the same PID that you used earlier.

kill -CONT <PID>

That’s it. You have successfully paused and restarted a process on Mac OS X. You can now happily continue with your work as if nothing ever happened.

How to Pause a Process on OS X originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

42 Useful Portable Apps For Mac

Trevor Dobrygoski — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 12:26:28 +0000

A while back I posted 10 Useful Portable Applications to Run On Your USB Drive. I thought it was time to do the same type of post for all of the Mac folks. If you do not find something in this list to suit your needs, with a few Google searches you are likely to find something to work for you.

1. Cyberduck

Opensource Mac FTP client. If you aren’t using Cyberduck, here is a basic run through.

2. Portable VLC OS X

The play anything media player. Highly recommended if you are using multiple computers.

3. Portable Adium

All-in-one instant messenger (Google, ICQ, Yahoo, AIM, MSN…)

4. Portable Firefox Cross Plartform

Firefox for both Windows and OSX. Use Firefox with add-ons like Xmarks to sync your bookmarks.

5. Portable Thunderbird Cross Platform

The cross platform version of Mozilla Thunderbird will allow you to access your email application anywhere you have a computer with a USB port.

6. Netfixer

Easy to use webpage capture tool. Use the optional bookmarklet to activate the application.

7. Camino

An Opensource web browser built for Macs by Mozilla. Some Firefox-like add-ons are available, but not near as many. Greasemonkey scripts can also be converted for use with Camino.

8. Neverball

Game of skill and patience. Use the mouse to tilt the floor and move the ball; it sounds easy, but it isn’t.

9. FSuite

Over 40 portable apps spanning everything from games to word processors, media players to a BitTorrent client, you shouldn’t be lacking anything in this pack of applications.

10. SmillaEnlarger

A image tool used to resize, especially to magnify .BMP files in high quality.

11. iStumbler

Find AirPort, Bluetooth, Bonjour and other wireless signals and services. Lots of extra information about the networks available in the area.

12. Bean

Free rich text editor compatible with Microsoft Word.

13. ViewIt

Quick-to-open image viewer which supports nearly all commonly used image formats.

14. Inquisitor

Lets you find information on the web in the same way you use Spotlight. Start typing and it will begin to return sites based on your criteria.

15. iBackup

Simple, small application to help automate backups.

16. Paintbrush

A simple Cocoa-based image editor for when Photoshop would be too much of a hassle.

17. Maintenance

System maintenance and repair utility, with different versions for Tiger and Leopard. Some uses are: repair permissions, delete applications, reset Spotlight’s Index, run periodic scripts…

18. Tofu

Text reader that arranges text on a page in columns sized properly for the window you have open. No scrolling up and down, just left to right.

19.TextWrangler

Very powerful very free text editor great for distraction free writing.

20. Portable Abiword

Opensource word processor. Read, write and save to OpenOffice.org, Microsoft Word, WordPerfect, Rich Text Format.

21. Xmind

Opensource mind mapping and collaboration application.

22. Portable Gimp

Opensource image editing. Many very powerful features in a very lightweight package.

23. Portable Inkscape

Opensource graphics editor similar to Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw or Freehand

24. Portable OpenOffice.org OS X

Complete Opensource office suite able to read and write to most commonly used file types.

25. AppCleaner

An app uninstaller that removes all of the accompanying application files.

26. PureFTPdManager

Opensource multi-user Secure FTP manager, great fro servers or networks.

27. Portable Nvu OS X

Opensource web authoring similar to Dreamweaver

28. Portable Audacity OS X

Opensource recording and editing software.

29. Google Chrome

Google’s web browser on a stick.

30. Smultron

Simple text editor with a massive amount of features

31. Highlight

Screen highlighter (great for presentations)

32. OnyX

Maintenance, optimization, and personalization utility (10.4 or 10.5

33. uTorrent

P2P file transfer. (Here are some set up instructions)

34. Fugu

An opensource SFTP, SCP and SSH client. Esay to set up and use.

35. Portable Check Off

Stand alone to-do manager.

36. Transmission

BitTorrent client. Great for creating and downloading torrent files.

*37 through 42 are listed to only work with OSX 10.4

37. Portable Safari

Bookmarks and preferences on your portable drive.

38. Portable Mail

The same mail and preferences on your portable drive you are used to on your main Mac (use with Portable Address Book).

39. Portable iCal

All your calendar events can go with you on your portable drive.

40. Portable Address Book

Contacts are kind of essential, take them with you on your portable drive.

41. Portable iChat

Keep all your buddies on your portable drive.

42. SyncPAppX

Sync your portable apps with local ones.

Which portable Mac apps do you use?

image credit: Michael Dale Bernard

42 Useful Portable Apps For Mac originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Mac: Manage Your App Windows More Efficiently With Windowshade X

Trevor Dobrygoski — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 12:30:00 +0000

A few months ago, Damien wrote a post about the need to keep windows open on top of others for better productivity. While Afloat for Mac does exactly that, Windowshade X does a little bit more.

WindowShade X is a small software (3.3MB) with plenty of great and useful features that allow you to manage your application windows more efficiently and quickly.

Before WindowShade X

When working with multiple windows on a Mac, you have a couple of options.

* Expose is by far, in my opinion, the most useful native application on a Mac for accessing multiple windows fast.

* Spaces groups open windows into separate work areas.

* Command + M will minimize the open window to the Dock.

While all of these can help manage several open windows, problems still remain. Viewing, quick access, locking a window on top of all others are a few.

After WindowShade X

I”ll give you three guesses what kind of problems WindowShade X solves. If it takes you more than two, your just plain slow. Get a cup of coffee and come back, I’ll wait here.

Okay, now that everyone here is a little more awake, here we go again.

Windowshade

The first solution offered is the namesake of the application. When the title bar of the window is double clicked, the body of the window disappears like a shade. This is great for things that need to be easily accessed, yet out of the way. This feature coupled with Growl notifications are great when using an instant messenger. The message can be read from the pop up notification. If I need to respond, the window is tucked away and easier to get to than if it were in the Dock.

Transparent Windows

The next feature you didn’t know you needed but will fall in love with is making a window transparent. Double clicking the title bar while holding the Ctrl button allows you to see the window(s) behind the one you are working in. The opacity is adjustable in the settings menu. At first I wasn’t sure I would use this feature a lot. Then I started to make it transparent for no reason just to try it. What I noticed is, I can watch a video playing in the background while I am typing notes. I can look at the cool desktop picture of the day or have a Seesmic open so I can monitor my Twitter feed.

Minimize-In-Place

This is probably my favorite of the features. Simply put, it minimizes the open window to the bottom of the screen with a double tap of the Ctrl button. The placement can be changed in the settings menu. I have mine go across the bottom of the screen. What makes this different than using the Command + M shortcut, is you can reopen that same window with another double tap of the Ctrl button. Minimizing a window this way is great if you want to look at something on the page directly behind the open window.

Keep Windows On Top

This last feature can be used in combination with the Windowshade and transparent window options. By double tapping the Command button, the window is locked on top of the others. It can be unlocked in the same way. I was amazed at how much time this feature saved me. Some ways you may want to use this feature would be if you are copying and pasting sections of one form to another. Having both windows accessible by clicking back and forth is a huge time saver. Another great use is, when used in combination with the “Windowshade”, the shaded windows can float on top of the windows for easy access.

The standard commands for minimizing like Command + M still work. However, when the standard methods are used in conjunction with these new features, you will be amazed at how much time you wasted toggling between windows before.

Windowshade X is free to try, but costs $13.50 to own. The demo software is fully functional and is available for trial for up to 15 days. Download it here.

How do you manage multiple open windows on your Mac?

Mac: Manage Your App Windows More Efficiently With Windowshade X originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

7 Useful Little Things in Snow Leopard That You Might Not Know

Jeffry Thurana — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 12:36:32 +0000

After about two weeks meddling with the latest Mac OS X: 10.6 Snow Leopard, I found several nice little improvements that might be useful for other users. I’ll keep on looking because I’m sure that there are more, but let’s see what we’ve got in our treasure box so far.

1. Date in Menubar

Not everybody will care about this, but for those who’s been longing to be able to glance at the menubar to see date and day, your wish has come true.

2. WiFi Signal strength indicator

While this is also not for everybody, those hotspot hunters will appreciate the new ability to know which spot has stronger signal. There’s also the indicator to show secure (password protected) or non-secure (free) spots.

3. Automatic Time Zone

Still related to WiFi, Mac users can set their machine to adjust the time zone automatically by determining the location of their current WiFi location. So if you travel a lot around the world and use WiFi to connect to the internet, you don’t need to manually go back and forth to the “Date and Time” settings in System Preferences.

4. Undelete the trash

People do “accidental deletion” all the time. And because the accidentally deleted files will be kept in the “Trash” folder until you really delete it, you can drag the files you still want to keep back to their original folder. But doing that manually over and over again can be annoying. Now in Snow Leopard, you can right click (or Control + Click) on the poor files, choose “Put Back”, and everybody will be happy again.

5. Better (Image) Drive Eject

Sometimes you can’t eject the (image) drive because it’s still in use or one of the content of that drive is in use by other application. You can fix this problem easily by closing the application and then you can eject the drive. Problem is, you don’t always know which application is using the drive. Snow Leopard makes it easy for its user to solve the problem by showing which application prevent the drive to be ejected.

6. Enlarged Icon

When you are using Icon view (Command + !), there’s a slider in Snow Leopard’s finder. The function is to adjust the size of the icon. So what? You might ask. Big icon, big deal. Actually, the cool things about this is you can actually “see” the item in the icon view. Image’s icon is the image itself, text’s icon is readable (if you set the view large enough), and you can even flip the page of a document’s icon.

7. Delayed Screensaver Password

One of the easiest way to secure your computer from the prying co-worker’s eyes is to set a screensaver password. But if often leave your computer in a short moment only to repeatedly type the password, this simple security system could be annoying. Snow Leopard let the users decide how long should the screensaver (or sleep mode) run before you need to type in the password. So if a user goes for a glass of water in the dispenser, he/she can continue right away.

I know seven is just a tiny part of Snow Leopard whole improvements. But I’ll add more along the way. Do you know other useful little things in Snow Leopard? Share using the comment below.

7 Useful Little Things in Snow Leopard That You Might Not Know originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

What’s New in Snow Leopard? Technologies Review of Snow Leopard

Jeffry Thurana — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 12:12:59 +0000

If there were awards for the boldest announcement in personal computing history, maybe the introduction of Snow Leopard in WWDC 2008 would win. Apple’s Bertrand Serlet stated that the latest and greatest Mac OS X would have 0 new features. In the world where new features are always the major selling points of every new OS, the announcement was a bold move.

Instead of selling new features, Apple emphasizes on “refinements”. Snow Leopard comes with new technologies which makes it a leaner and faster OS than its predecessors.

Why don’t we take a look at the new technologies and improvements of the youngest feline of Mac OS X family.

New Technologies Explained

Here are new technologies that introduced with Snow Leopard:

1. 64-bit computing

The entire computing industry is moving from 32-bit to 64-bit technology,” Apple said, so nearly all system applications in Snow Leopard are rewritten in 64-bit code. To common users, the benefits of using 64-bit technology are faster system performance, support for larger system memory (up to 16 Terrabytes), and higher level of system security.

2. Grand Central Dispatch

I personally think that Apple has chosen the right icon for GCD because from my understanding, Grand Central Dispatch is like a train traffic controller. This technology will assign every running process to available processor resources, so the whole system can efficiently use the machine’s computing power to its optimum limit. The result is better and faster OS.

3. OpenCL

If GCD is the technology to optimize the CPU power of a machine, then OpenCL (stands for Open Computing Language) is the counterpart for GPU. This technology will enable unused graphic processing power for non-graphical process.

4. QuickTime X

The QuickTime that we are talking about here is not just a mere media player but more to the next-generation media technology that powers the audio and video experience in Mac OS X. Included inside this technology is the media player, the ability to deliver smooth media playback, support for advanced video streaming, the ability to edit and share media to various devices including mobile gadgets like iPod and iPhone.

Few of the many improvements

There are too many improvements in Snow Leopard to be listed down here, so I’ll just pick few that are the most apparent – at least to me.

1. Dock and Exposé

You can now acces Exposé directly from the Dock just by clicking and holding the item’s icon on the dock. Now, along with Alt + Tab, this is my favorite way to quickly access another open window. You may also noticed that items in Exposé are neatly arranged.

2. Scrollable Stacks

You can create Stacks easily by dragging a folder to the Dock. The main purpose of this feature is to quickly look at the content of a folder. In Snow Leopard, users can do scrolling within a stack, and navigate through folders by clicking at the folder.

3. More hard drive space

Apple claims that you’ll free about 7 Gb of hard drive space if you upgrade to Snow Leopard. While I fail to make the pictorial documentation to back up the claim (I was too excited to upgrade), my hard drive went from about 13 Gb in Leopard to about 24 Gb in Snow Leopard. But that’s also because there are a lot of internet cache that being cleared out because of the system restarting.

4. Address Book and iCal sync to Google and Yahoo

The organizing freaks would surely appreciate the new ability of iCal and Address Book to synchronize with Google and Yahoo account. Even those whose life is more of the happy-go-lucky type (like me) wouldn’t mind getting these improvements.

One new feature, he lied!

It turns out that Snow Leopard is not without any new feature. There’s one: support for Microsoft Exchange 2007. This must be a good news for those who uses MS Exchange server. I myself don’t have access to any Exchange since I worked alone in my home office so I can’t provide you with any comment.

Maybe there are some readers who can share first hand experience on this feature?

Any other opinions (or corrections to my limited knowledge) on Snow Leopard’s new technologies and improvements are also welcomed. Share using the comment below.

What’s New in Snow Leopard? Technologies Review of Snow Leopard originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Things to prepare before upgrading your Mac to Snow Leopard

Jeffry Thurana — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 12:07:32 +0000

Don’t judge the book by the cover. That statement might be the perfect analogy of what I feel after upgrading to the latest OS from Apple – Snow Leopard. At first glance, everything looks the same as the previous Leopard – as beautiful, but nothing new. (And honestly, I was expecting a little bit drama here). But the more I use it, the more “wow moments” I get – starting from the bumping number of my remaining hard drive space to the tidy-organized look of Exposé effect. (I am on the treasure hunting mode now trying to find tiny gems scattered all over the place.)

Being the techie-geek that I am, I jumped out at the first chance of upgrading my Mac system from Leopard (10.5) to Snow Leopard (10.6), but everyday Mac users might not be as eager as me. So, if you are still considering on whether you should add the snow to the leopard, here are few things to help you make the decision.

To upgrade or not to upgrade

This is a simple question to answer: upgrade! All of the improvements should be good enough reasons to do so, but Apple has made the decision making even easier by pricing the new operating system at a ridiculously US$29.

But there are some caveats here: Snow Leopard is designed for Mac Intel only, so if your system is still PowerPC based, you are out of luck. (Maybe now it’s the perfect time to go Intel?) Apple also made it clear that the US$ 29 upgrade is only for Leopard, while Tiger (10.4) users should go with the US$ 169 Mac Box Set (iLife ‘09 and iWork ‘09 included).

While the higher price of Mac Box Set is justified by iLife and iWork, please note that Tiger users has other option because many Mac users has confirmed that the US$29 Snow Leopard will upgrade any Intel Mac.

Preparing Your System

If you’ve decided to take the chance, there are few things to do prior upgrading to Snow Leopard.

1. Check for incompatible applications

As with any OS upgrade, there are always issues of incompatibilies. To give you a headstart of what might happen to your softwares after Snow Leopard upgrade, Apple has released a list of incompatible software which will be moved to a folder called – well – Incompatible Software.

You might also want to check other Snow Leopard compatibility list on this Wikidot page.

2. Do some spring cleaning

It’s also a good idea to clean up your system a little bit before doing the upgrade. You can do this by uninstalling unused applications – using uninstaller like AppTrap, and by doing some system maintenance – using something like Onyx. Both apps are free and ironically, both haven’t had Snow Leopard-compatible version – yet.

3. Back up your data

There are just too many examples about how important backing up your data is that I don’t have to do restate it again here. Beside Apple’s Time Machine, another free alternative to back up utilities is CarbonCopyCloner.

4. Make a bootable back up system

If you have an unused extra external hard drive and if you are really paranoid, you could copy a bootable system of your current Mac before installing Snow Leopard. You can use the free trial of SuperDuper for this purpose.

The Upgrading Process

And finally, the upgrade. You may say this is like an anticlimax to the whole story, but the upgrade process itself is a snap. You just:

insert the Snow Leopard Install DVD,
reboot the system,
hold down the Alt/Option key during rebooting to make the booting option appears. (Or not. I need to hold the Alt/Option during my upgrade, but some users report that they don’t have to).
Choose the install DVD to boot,
Follow the instruction on the screen (and for those who want to do clean install: choose Disk Utility from Utility menu at the welcome screen, and do some formatting and repartitioning the disk. Warning: not for the faint hearted!)
Go get something to drink while waiting.

With the system upgraded to Snow Leopard, it’d be perfect to look at all of the improvements the new OS brings. So, please save that thought for our next discussion.

Have you upgraded your system to Snow Leopard? Or will you? Share your thoughts, opinions, upgrading tips and tricks, using the comment below.

Things to prepare before upgrading your Mac to Snow Leopard originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Five Free Business Tools for Mac Users

Shevonne — Sun, 06 Sep 2009 12:43:33 +0000

Running a business can get pretty expensive, including all the pricey software tools that you need to keep on top of all your administrative tasks. Entrepreneurs sometimes have to spend a ton of money to get basic business tools that are needed to have a business running smoothly. Here are five business tools that will help you keep track of your business if you are a Mac user:

1. NeoOffice

NeoOffice is very impressive. It is a user friendly office tool that will help you develop all the documentation, spreadsheets, and presentations for your business. If you have used other office application softwares, it has the same basic functionalities, as well as additional ones. NeoOffice Writer has everything you would need a word processing software to have. One great feature that I haven’t seen anywhere else is the Bibliography Database. If you are creating extensive documentation that has numerous references, Bibliography Database keeps track of them. NeoOffice Calc helps you create easy and robust spreadsheets that you can use. NeoOffice Impress helps you create impressive presentations that will wow your clients. NeoOffice Drawing allows you to design your own documentations, very similar to Adobe’s InDesign. Overall, it’s a great suite of office applications with the quality of expensive versions of it.

To download NeoOffice, here is the site: http://www.neooffice.org/neojava/en/index.php

2.GanttProject

GanttProject allows you to create a work-breakdown structure that will keep track of your project schedule, critical paths, and milestones. Additionally, it allows you to monitor your resources. It is very similar to MS Project, but without the cost. You can easily add resource information, task-related options, and link tasks that people have complained is pretty hard to do on MS Project. This can be used for any project, including blog creation, marketing schedule, or social media game plan.

To download GanttProject, here is the site: http://www.ganttproject.biz/

3. EverNote

Evernote is a way of keeping track of all your notes that you collect for a project. It is great because you can capture images, videos, and another forms of media that you are unable to get using a basic word processing tool, or scribbling notes by hand. The great thing about it is that you can sync it to the web, smartphone, and computer, so you have all your information any time. The free version gives you 40MB a month, so if you want more space, you will need to upgrade, which gives you 500MB. Overall, it’s a great capture-all software that can keep all the notes for your project.

To download EverNote, here is the site: https://www.evernote.com

4. Buddi

Buddi is a simple finance accounting software that provides you a way to keep track of your expenses. It doesn’t have a way to interface with your financial institution, like you could probably get from web-based finance accounting tools (e.g. Mint or Yodlee). However, the budget reports more than make up for it. There are reports and charts that you can use to view your budget in different formats. Overall, it does the job to keep track of your business.

To download Buddi, here is the site: http://buddi.digitalcave.ca/

5. FreeMind

FreeMind is a mind map tool that allows you to create mind maps of your project. Mindmapping is a great way to help you with planning. It’s a tool that many businesses are starting to adopt because they see the value in using this as a way to plan projects before the work begins. FreeMind has the basic functions that allows you to create a mine map. Furthermore, your maps can have images, colors, and attachments to make it come to life. Another great feature is the ability to write notes that append to a node so you can have additional formation that could not be shown mind map. You can also link to external web sites, and get to them from FreeMind.

To download FreeMind, here is the site: http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

What other software do you use to manage your business?

Five Free Business Tools for Mac Users originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Mac: How to Create a Basic Script With Automator

Trevor Dobrygoski — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 11:55:27 +0000

If you are one of the growing number of Apple users, you have likely come across a strange looking robot guy in your Applications folder. For a long time I ignored this application. It looks pretty confusing when you open it up. All that is on the screen 3 columns; one with application names, one with actions and the last is a big blank window to drag the scripts to.

This can be very intimidating if you have absolutely no idea what yo do next. Sure you can randomly drag actions into the window then hit run to see what happens. Odds are you will get an error or nothing will happen. After a few times of trying without success, most people give up and tell people on Twitter it sucks.

The first step in the process is to decide what you want automated. The example below is very simple. Batch Image Scale is something I use all the time. I have a couple different image scale scripts for different sizes. Setting multiple versions up may take you a few extra minutes initially, but it saves a lot of time in the future.

Create A Script

1. In your Applications folder, open Automator.app [Cmd + Shift + A]

2. In the first column on the left, choose the an application. When you select an application, the Actions in the second column change.

3. Select the Action you would like to perform. A good place to start is an action like Ask for Finder Item. When setting up a Workflow where there may be multiple files or folders involved, make sure to check Allow Multiple Selection.

4. In some cases a warning box may appear. If this does happen, read it carefully. In this case, the pop up is asking if I want to copy the files and make the changes to the copies. Making the changes to the copies will preserved if anything were to go wrong.

5. In the far left column, click the Preview app. Drag the Scale Images action to the window.

6. Select the pixel or percentage you would like the image scaled to. In this case I chose 500 pixels for this example. If you are taking really large pictures and want to send them via email, you may want to choose a percentage instead.

7. This is what your basic Scale Image workflow should look like.

8. Here is a before and after of the information pane showing the change in dimensions.

9. Now that you know the Workflow does what you want it to, it’s time to save it. In the File menu you are presented with three options: Save, Save As and Save As Plug-in. The Save and Save As options are pretty much the same thing. Both ask you to name the file, choose a location to save it to and in what format you want to save it. The two format choices are Workflow or Application. The main difference is, a Workflow is like a draft which opens in Automator and can be edited. If you save it as an Application, no changes can be made.

The other choice is the Save As Plug-in option. The reason for saving the Workflow as a Finder Plug-in is when you need to resize images in a folder on my desktop, you can CTRL + Click to get the menu. In this menu highlight Automator and there is your Workflow.

Premade Scripts

For those of you who may not be comfortable with making a Workflow/Application in Automator, there are many sites and forums where people post them for free. Some of the people go as far as writing more advanced scripts and use Automator to run those scripts. A while back Damien posted 20+ Useful Automator Scripts. On these sites, there are many other scripts. If the 20+ in the post don’t do it for you, look around on those sites, there are many many more.

Have you used Automator to make any useful scripts?

Mac: How to Create a Basic Script With Automator originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)