Make Tech Easier » Mac

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)

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)

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)

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)

Two Useful Mac Tools to Help Students Track Their Assignments

Jeffry Thurana — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 12:34:03 +0000

If you’ve been a student before, you must know the feeling of overwhelmed by all of your assignments at school. As if having to finish all of those ’slacking time’ killers is not awful enough, you also have to keep track of everything and not drawn in the ocean of deadlines.

Some students just accepted everything as part of their life and moved on (while mumbled red-penciled words along the way), some thought that they’ve had enough and tried to make their points by protesting the authorities, but some others tried to find the way out and came up with these free applications.

Schoolhouse vs iProcrastinate

1. Schoolhouse

As the name suggest, this app is designed to help school students manage their assignments. It has the ability to add, sort and organize assignments, exams, and projects quickly and easily. Students can create notebooks (collection of notes) and notes (the place to actually write class notes). Files and links can be attached to the notes for easy references.

Beside the intuitive iTunes-like interface, other thing that I find cool about this app is the ability to easily add “partners” to each assignment. The name of the “partner” will be picked up from the Address Book. Alternatively, if your partner’s name is not in the address book, you can add new person.

Schoolhouse goes further by providing Classcast, a feature which ability is to publish assignments to the web automatically for anyone to subscribe to. And as the final touch, students can chart their scores over the course of the term to keep a general outlook of their progress.

In general, this one is a great application for students. But one important thing is missing, the ability to synchronize the task to iCal. This means no mobile alarm or reminder available when the users are away from the computer.

2. iProcrastinate

This app will allow students to prolong their slacking time and procrastinate more by giving those classroom citizens the ability to create and edit subjects and tasks and breaking them into more simple and manageable steps.

Other than all the standard features of task and assignments tracker for students, iProcrastinate has a nice feature of associating files to an assignment and burn those files to CD as backup or as a way to share the materials to peers.

If you compare this app with Schoolhouse, iProcrastinate should have an advantage of having the ability to add the tasks to iCal as to dos. But when I tried this feature, nothing happened (maybe it’s just me?). More on having task reminders on the go, iProcrastinate also comes as iPhone application which gives it an edge over Schoolhouse which only available as Mac desktop app.

As for the interface, I prefer Schoolhouse over iProcrastinate. Another downside of iProcrastinate is the “too minimalistic” help file and Preferences. It’s difficult to dig deeper as the website is also too uninformative. For example: the developer claimed that users can create quick task instantly from any application, but even after really trying, I failed to find the way to do so.

Other alternatives

There are other free task and assignment trackers which are not created by students, such as: AssignmentTracker X (an open-source project) and Task List (no longer under development and is unsupported, but still works fine under Leopard).

What about you? Do you use one of these tools or do you know other better alternatives? Share using the comment below.

Two Useful Mac Tools to Help Students Track Their Assignments originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Google Quick Search Box: A Great Alternative to Quicksilver

Jeffry Thurana — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 12:02:06 +0000

There are only few applications so good and useful that people mistakenly thought it’s a native part of the OS. For Mac OS X, Quicksilver is one of the few. With the correct plugins, this application launcher can be expanded into almost anything that users need; from text editor to clipboard manager.

But despite the popularity, the developer has decided to let it go and move to another project: Google Quick Search Box (QSB); which promises to do even better than its older siblings.

I personally think that keeping the promise would not be easy because it’s very difficult to surpass the greatness of Quicksilver, even for the creator himself. Many have tried without any significant result. But if Google is at your back, almost anything is possible.

Taking a peek

At first glance, QSB is just a plain search box with the colorful word Google in it.

I can’t help but feeling that this one is the other side of the same coin as Quicksilver – similar but on the opposite side. If Quicksilver is an application launcher with an additional file searching capabilities, then QSB is a search tool with the additional ability of a file launcher.

Even the usage is more or less the same: you hit the shortcut key combination, and it will pop-out waiting for the users’ input; hit the Esc key and it will disappear. The default shortcut key for QSB is hitting the Command key twice. A genius solution to the overused Command + Space or Control + Space combination used by other launchers.

When you type something in the box, QSB will try to help you complete the word or phrase by giving you the nearest guess. This autocomplete feature is similar to the one in Quicksilver. QSB will also give you the possible action that you can do after typing the keyword. You can navigate through the menu using Tab, Arrow keys and Enter or using mouse clicks. The differences between the two is only cosmetics, and I like QSB interface better.

I noticed at least two other differences between QSB and Quicksilver. They are:

When you type something in the QSB box and you pause, the word/phrase will stay there unless you hit the backspace button – like in Spotlight. But in Quicksilver, pausing the typing means retyping it again. Sometimes Quicksilver’s input method can be annoying, but you don’t have to hit backspace all the time you want to change the string.
QSB has the additional Google search option for the inputs. Hitting the Enter key will open Google search page with the input as the search string. Quicksilver don’t have this luxury.

Other goodies

There’s a small arrow button at the right side of the interface. If you click on it you could find other goodies offered by QSB. For example: quick access to GMail, Wikipedia and YouTube.

Each one of these goodies has its own shortcut key combination, so users can navigate QSB features only by using keyboard. If I want to open my GMail inbox, I just open QSB (hit the Command Key twice) followed by Command +1 (GMail) and then Enter. The GMail page will be opened in your default browser.

QSB Preferences also can be accessed from this little arrow button (or using Command + Comma key combination). There are few settings that can be adjusted here, such as: Basics,

Searchable Items,

and Under The Hood.

But the important things to do to optimize the usage of QSB is adding Account(s). There are two types of account that you can add: Google and Twitter. You know what that means, right? Aside from Google Services, QSB users can also update their status to Tweeter.

Just write whatever you want to tweet in QSB, hit Tab and choose Tweeter, then hit Enter.

Given what QSB has already capable of today and all the future possibilites, I think I’m going to go with QSB instead of Quicksilver. Granted, Quicksilver and all of the plugins are far more powerful than QSB today, but I don’t think I’d need all those bells and whistles.

What about you? Have you tried QSB? Share your thoughts using the comment below.

Google Quick Search Box: A Great Alternative to Quicksilver originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Mac – Customizing Growl to The Fullest

Jeffry Thurana — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 12:38:31 +0000

There are great applications that can do many things, and there are also other great applications which can only do one thing but do it best. Growl falls into the second category.

I’ve installed this great app a long time ago and totally forget about it. Yet it works flawlessly in the background while I began to accept that all the pop-up notifications were naturally part of Mac’s native features.

Then one day, when I was going through the list of things in my Mac’s System Preferences, I rediscovered Growl and realized that there are many customizations available to adjust it to each user’s preferences.

Download and Installation

For those who hasn’t had the opportunity to meet Growl, this is a system wide notification application. It will display some specified changes from a range of supported applications. If you want to know what applications that can use Growl ability, you can find the list here.

To use Growl, the first thing to do is to download this small app. Then open the 4.5MB .dmg file, double click on the installation file, and follow the easy-installation process. Growl will then reside inside your Mac’s preference pane.

However, inside the package you will also find some documentations, uninstallation script, and a folder called Extras. Inside this folder you’ll find some extra features that you can add to Growl’s capabilities:

GrowlDict (a plug-in for Apple Dictionary)
growlnotify (a command-line tool to post Growl notifications)
GrowlMail (a plug-in for Apple Mail that posts a Growl notification every time new mail arrives)
GrowlTunes (an application that tell users info about the song that currently played by iTunes)
HardwareGrowler (an application that sends Growl notifications when devices are connected or disconnected from your Mac)

Each extra comes with the necessary documentation but you can find more info about these Extras by visiting Growl’s page on Extras.

Customization

After installation, Growl will work fine. There’s no tinkering necessary. But users can customize many aspect of Growl from System Preferences.

Users can tell Growl to act differently for different applications. There are list of Growl-able applications in the Applications tab. Choose one of them and click the “Configure” button to edit the settings.

One of the adjustable settings is the type of notification skins to use for that specific application. Users are also able to choose what kind of condition that will trigger the notification.

“Display Options” tab give users the ability to change the default ‘face’ to use for the notification window and to change the behavior of every elements of the skins.

There are many skin styles that you can choose, such as the default Smoke,

Brushed,

Bubbles,

or many others. Everytime you change the style, Growl will give you a preview of the notification window.

And if you are the person that loves to meddle with the look, you can expand the choices of Growl’s styles by downloading and installing some of the available choices.

If your Mac is part of a network, it is also possible to receive and display notifications from other computers in the same network. It is also possible to send notifications from your Mac to other computers. Network tab is the place to set everything related to network notifications. Ask you network admin for help if necessary.

Do you have any tips or tricks on using Growl? Do you know other alternative to Growl? Share using the comment below.

Mac – Customizing Growl to The Fullest originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

How to Download RSS Content Automatically in Mac

Jeffry Thurana — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 12:00:34 +0000

One of the internet activities that I love most is downloading. The feeling of about to get something new from the Internet reminds me of the nostalgic feeling of waiting for the postman to deliver a package from my overseas penpal.

Thanks to the RSS technology, you could get automatic notifications of some regular downloads that you do – such as TV shows, manga series, podcast and other kinds of casts – if the provider of the content support RSS, that is.

Automate the RSS Content Download

And then I found Automatic. This small application for Mac which reside in the preference pane takes the pleasure of using RSS one step further by allowing users to automatically download the content in the background.

The installation is a snap. Just double click on the installer and choose whether you want to install the app for that active user only or for all users of the computer. Unless there’re more than one user who uses the machine, choose all users.

After the installation, Automatic Preferences Pane will be opened in the “General” tab. The first thing to do is to start the app by clicking on the “Start” button. The next step is to decide where should the download be saved.

Note: Users can set individual saved location for every specific download group if they want to and overwrite this general setting.

To add RSS content download groups, choose the “Subscriptions” tab and click on the “+” (plus) sign on the bottom of the window.

Put the name of the download group in the “Description” field. Give check mark on the “TV Options” box if you are downloading TV shows episodes. Then add the RSS feeds by clicking the “+” (plus) sign on the bottom.

Paste down the RSS URL address and give description. You can add keywords in the filter field if the feed’s content contains unwanted items and you want to include only specific items. But if you prefer to filter out unwanted items, give check mark to the “Invert” button.

If you want to know more about the filtering rules and the regular expressions that you can use, there’s a quick-start guide available at the downloaded package.

After adding all the download groups and all their feeds, you can sit back and let Automatic do the dirty job for you. Every time a new item appears on the list, it will be downloaded automatically and saved in the preferred location(s).

Sidenotes on the story

Automatic keeps record of all downloaded items. You can access it by going to the Subscriptions tab and click on the “Complete History” button.

If you want to see more elaborate logs of all activities, go to the General tab and click on the “Log” button.

Automatic really makes the process of downloading RSS content easier. But upon using it, please keep several things in your mind.

First, downloading large files (like TV show episodes) using regular Internet connection will take a long time and consume parts of your bandwidth. So, at the times when you are wondering why it takes so long just to connect to Google home page, remember that you have Automatic running in the background.

Second, there are tons of free files out there available for download, but not all files on the net are legal. Please download only the legal files and remember that you are fully responsible for all of your actions.

Have you used Automatic? Do you have other alternatives? Please share using the comment below.

How to Download RSS Content Automatically in Mac originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

How to Convert Your Video Easily in Mac with Evom

Jeffry Thurana — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 11:52:59 +0000

The world of videos is the perfect example on how impossible it is to monopolize a format. This is of course a good sign of open market. The problem is, there are too many cases that users have to go few extra miles just to be able to watch a video on their chosen gadget. There are also many cases that users failed to do so just because of the differences of the formats.

It seems that a good video converter is already a necessity for every computer. And while I was out on the quest of finding one, I stumbled into this free application from The Little App Factory called Evom. (The name is the backward spelling for the word ‘move’, maybe they deliberately gave the app that name to make it memorable.)

The small preparation

Before downloading this app, please make sure that your system is Mac OS X – Leopard. If you have no problem with that, go and download the latest version (0.94b at the time of writing).

Another thing to prepare before running this app for the first time is the internet connection. Upon installation, Evom will ask users to download video components required for the converting process.

After the download process finished, you are ready to go.

Move Formats Easily

The first thing that you would notice from Evom is how simple its interface. It’s like a dropbox where users can send their video files to, either from the hard drive or from a video link.

Evom provides users with a bookmarklet to enable one-click-downloading of their favorite flash videos from sites like YouTube. To use the bookmarklet, drag this link to the bookmarks bar of web browser.

Then users can choose where they want to save (or ‘Send’) the video and what format the video will be. I think the first choice – even though it’s located at the very right – should be Folder because here you have the most choices of format and quality.

Another possible saving location is:

- YouTube, as a web video. Don’t forget to fill in your username and password in the ‘Login Credentials’

- iTunes and iPod. Here you have the option to save only the video sound as MP3 file.

- Apple TV.

After choosing the location, click ‘Convert’,

and wait for the process to finish.

The one little thing that’s missing

Evom does its job smoothly and the conversion process is quite fast. But I think there is one little thing missing from this app.

It is the “remaining time” indicator in the conversion process. Most users – like me – would like to know how much longer they have to wait for the process to finish. But maybe that indicator would pop up in the final release, as the one I tried the beta version.

I think Evom is a nice app and a good free alternative to all of the other paid video conversion apps out there. Don’t forget to check out another article here in MakeTechEasier about other free video converters for Mac.

What do you think? Share your opinion in the comment below.

How to Convert Your Video Easily in Mac with Evom originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

Automatically Rate Songs in Your iTunes – Mac Only

Jeffry Thurana — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:06:23 +0000

In my personal opinion as both Mac and Windows users, iTunes is the best music player I’ve come across. The simple yet intuitive interface alone is enough to make me ditch other players out there. And there are many other powerful features which hides behind the simplicity of the appearance.

One of the iTunes features that I like most is the rating system. Users can tag any song with one to five stars based on their preferences, and users can sort or filter the playlist based on the rating. A quick glance at someone’s iTunes display and you can clearly tell which songs he/she likes and dislikes.

The rating system really is a great idea; but, and this is a big but (no pun intended), the bigger the song list, the more difficult for users to give rating to each and every song. Can you imagine editing 2376 songs one by one? That’s the size of a tiny part of my current song list. (And I don’t know anybody who has less than 100 songs on their list).

AutoRate to the rescue

Luckily, there’s an application called AutoRate which can help iTunes users to rate their songs. This app tries to ‘guess’ user’s listening preferences and give rate to each song automatically by looking at how often each track is played and how many times each track is skipped.

The formula uses a combination of play and skip frequency (averaged out over the life of each track), and the play and skip count. Tracks that are frequently skipped are penalised, while often-played tracks are given a higher rating.

Both the track play count and skip count are used in conjunction with the length of time each track has been in your library to determine, on a relative basis, how much you like each track. Ratings become dynamic and change with your taste in music following how you listen to your songs.

That is why you will get no rating for the track that has never been played.

The Simplicity

Before using AutoRate, please make sure that you have iTunes version 7 and above, and Mac OS X 10.5 (and above). If those requirements are met, download and install the app.

The usage is simple: you just open it, and click the “Begin” button. It will analyze your playlist, then assign the ratings automatically based on the result.

There are some adjustments that you can make via the Preferences, such as:
- which playlist folders to be given ratings to. (General)

- how would you like to set up the rating system. (Rating)

- whether to use full star or half star rating. (Advanced)

With AutoRate, my iTunes playlist has grown a little bit more mature without me having to do the hard work.

One last note, you would want to run AutoRate every once in a while to keep the rating system up to date.

Have you use AutoRate? Or do you have other alternatives of similar app? Please share using the comment below.

Automatically Rate Songs in Your iTunes – Mac Only originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

How to Manage Your Email More Efficiently With Postbox

Jeffry Thurana — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 12:48:54 +0000

I’ve been a web-mail kinda guy since a long time ago. I ditched my email clients (Mail, Entourage, and Thunderbird) and prefer to keep my GMail handy on any computer (or sometimes cellphone) that I use, wherever I am. But Postbox might just change my mind.

This free open-source mail client (available for Mac and Windows) combines few great features that can help users manage their emails better.

The developer’s site have a comprehensive list of Postbox’s features and abilities, but here are few that I personally find useful.

1. Create new accounts

The first time Postbox is opened, it will offer you to create a new account. You can also create another account later by going to File -> New -> Account menu. Compared to other email client that I’ve used so far, Postbox’s new account creation is the easiest. It supports major web mail services like GMail, Hotmail, Yahoo and even MobileMe.

2. Browse mails with tabs

Each time you select a mail, it will be shown on one of the window’s pane. There are two pane’s layout that you can choose: Classic View and Vertical View. You can toggle between these two views from the View -> Layout menu.

If you double click on one of the messages, it will be opened in a new tab instead of window. I think the idea is nice and produces less cluttered workspace.

3. Organize messages with topics

In Postbox, you can organize messages by topics. You can set and add any topics that you can think of according to your preferences.

The easiest way to add topic is by right clicking on the favorite topic pane and choose “Create New Favorit Topic” on the popup window. Then you can to assign messages to the topic by clicking the Plus (+) sign next to the “Topic” option in each message.

But if you need to assign topic(s) to many messages automatically, use filtering option for the fastest result. Go to “Message -> Create Filter From Message” menu.

4. To Dos

Postbox comes with the ability to create to do list easily. Not as elaborate as Outlook, but most people – like me – do not need advance organizing capability.

You can create a to do entry manually by clicking “New To Do” icon, or you can ‘tag’ a to do entry to a message by selecting a message and clicking the ‘To Do” button in the message view.

After that, if you go to “View -> Pin To Dos” menu, all the message with the ‘To Do’ tag will be listed above other message.

5. Attachment (and other) List

This app also has a attachment list feature that will show all the attachments from all of the messages in one page. Just click on the Attachment button under the search field. There are 3 other list buttons that you can choose: Images, Links, and Contacts.

The list will open up in a new tab. From here on you can choose to Save (to your hard drive), Send (to others via email), Upload (to Google Docs, but I don’t think this service is compatible with every filetype), or just to have a Quick Look.

This list is based on my short encounter with Postbox for Mac, but the feel for Windows version should not be far off. As time goes by, I’m sure I’ll add more to the “what I like about Postbox” list.

Have you tried Postbox? Whether you will like it or not, this nice app deserves at least a try.

And as always, share your thoughts and experiences in the comment below.

How to Manage Your Email More Efficiently With Postbox originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

How To Change Your Time Machine Backup Interval

Miles — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 12:52:58 +0000

Time Machine is Apple’s all-in-one backup solution that takes a snapshot of your hard drive and incrementally backs up any files that have changed since the previous backup. The default configuration is pretty sparse; there’s an On/Off slider, Disk Selection, and an Options area where you can exclude folders from the backup.

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

StartInterval
3600

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!

How To Change Your Time Machine Backup Interval originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)