How tos
Full category list for displayed posts: How tos, Media, Software
9:01 pm, December 5th, 2008, Lonnie Lazar
It’s probably safe to say only the newest of computing newbies may not understand that when you delete a file or “move it to the trash” it stays on your hard drive, taking up space, until you actually go to the trash and “empty” it.
This is actually a wonderful feature because even the most jaded computer professional is only human, and humans of all levels of intelligence and experience have been known to act, from time to time, in haste, without thinking. Sometimes being able to retrieve something from the trash can be the best thing ever.
But here’s something I bet a lot of savvy Mac users don’t know. I didn’t know about it - but I’m only on the just-sort-of functionally literate end of the Mac savvy scale. When you delete a photograph in iPhoto, it doesn’t go to the Trash trash, it goes to the iPhoto Trash. And it stays there until you empty the iPhoto Trash.
I’ve mentioned before in this space that my main computer is a five year old PowerBook G4. It’s a great computer but its 80GB hard drive is getting pretty full of stuff by now, especially because I am an avid user of Garage Band, iMovie and iPhoto. Recently, when I was looking for ways to free up space on my hard drive, duplicate Garage Band projects and old DVD slideshows I had in iMovie were easy enough to find and delete. But if you’re like me, you’ve got .jpg files in folders all over your computer and finding duplicates or unneeded ones to trash for drive space recovery can be daunting at best.
iPhoto itself doesn’t help a lot either, because its many folders are not readily accessible in Finder and if you don’t think to open the app and search from inside it, you can easily miss an opportunity to recover lots of disk space.
When you’re importing the hundreds and hundreds of pics you’ll be taking this holiday season, remember to think about your iPhoto trash and empty it out once you’re sure you haven’t mistakenly deleted that once-in-a lifetime picture of Mommy kissing Santa Claus.
Thanks to Scott McNulty at MacWorld
Posted by Lonnie Lazar in How tos, Media, Software | 2 Comments »
7:43 am, November 21st, 2008, Giles Turnbull
As the holidays loom ever closer and the global economic get worse and worse, Apple’s doing its bit to encourage a little seasonal spending.
The new iPhone Your Life section on apple.com is full of tips and tricks for new iPhone users, encouraging them to dive into the App Store and look around.
There are recommendations and staff picks, and on the Top Apps page there’s limited web-based access to best selling apps in a range of categories - the first time I’ve seen Apple replicating some of the App Store functionality on the web.
The Tips and Tricks page is also a good starting point for Christmas Day iPhone newbies (of whom, I have no doubt, there will be many).
(Via John Gruber)
Posted by Giles Turnbull in How tos, News, iPhone | No Comments »
8:45 pm, November 20th, 2008, Lonnie Lazar
One of my favorite Mac programs is Garage Band. As a musician and songwriter, I am endlessly impressed with how much creativity and flexibility Apple has built into the program, for my money the star of the iLife bundle.
I learned about a new little trick for creating one-touch sound effects using Garage Band’s Musical Keyboard, as described by writer Christopher Breen in MacWorld.
You can map up to 18 of the program’s built-in sound effects (select Sound Effect from the Software Instrument Info pane), or pre-recorded AIFF files dragged from the Finder, to keys on the Mac keyboard (as shown above) and save the whole set as an “Instrument” to be called for use in creating any new podcast or other recording project.
Be sure to see Breen’s article for the step-by-step instructions for utilizing this handy tip.
Posted by Lonnie Lazar in How tos, Music | No Comments »
3:08 pm, November 20th, 2008, Giles Turnbull
These fabulous tilt-shift G4 iMacs are the work of joelsuplido on Flickr. He’s got a whole set of them, there’s more Mac ones to drool over. It’s not just the tilt-shift effect, it’s the colors; they’re gorgeous.
These images were made using Joe Prytherch’s Auto tilt-shift Photoshop action, which you can grab and use for free.
(Pic used by permission; thanks joelsuplido!)
Posted by Giles Turnbull in Hardware, How tos | 3 Comments »
12:35 pm, September 11th, 2008, Giles Turnbull
My inability to do a simple task, like call up the international character palette, or even remember its (mostly) system-wide shortcut, is well documented.
That’s why I love something like ⌘C⌘V; I’m so much better at remembering URLs. This simple web page will save me whole seconds every year.
I shall now paste in some celebratory glyphs, because I can: ‽ ※ ☼ ✔
(Whether or not they’ll show up properly in your browser, having been mangled in turn by TextMate, Wordpress and the browser itself, is a whole nother question entirely.)
Posted by Giles Turnbull in How tos | 5 Comments »
8:50 pm, January 8th, 2008, Leander Kahney
Last month, after a couple of eggnogs at the office, I drenched my keyboard in a cup of coffee. Kind readers suggested running it through the dishwasher. Of course, putting keyboards in dishwashers is the kind of thing you read on the internet all the time, but never believe it actually works.
So, skeptical that it would work, I tried it myself.I’m happy to report that running a filthy, coffee-stained keyboard through the dishwasher works great. The keyboard is spotless, and it works perfectly.
Feel me: dishwashers make keyboards better than new.
Full procedure after the jump.
Read the rest of this post »
Posted by Leander Kahney in Hardware, Hardware Hacks, How tos, Rumors | 36 Comments »
9:46 am, October 31st, 2007, Leander Kahney
Illusionist Andrew Mayne is using a special filter in iChat to make it look like he’s bored to death or his soul is being ripped out.
It’s pretty effective.
Check his page for video of the effects in action.
Instructions for using the quartz filter called “HoloGit” is here on MacRumors.
Posted by Leander Kahney in How tos, Web | 2 Comments »
10:57 pm, June 24th, 2007, Pete Mortensen
Philip Elmer-Dewitt, author of the excellent Apple 2.0 blog, has rounded up the blogosphere’s analyses of Apple’s new guided iPhone tour. Definitely check the list out - it’s really awesome that Apple built in read-only support for PDFs, Word docs and Excel spreadsheets. A friend from Toronto showed me a PowerPoint slideshow on his Motorola Q. Having seen that, I’m desperate for Apple to do the same thing. You listening, Cupertino?
Technorati Tags: iphone, rumor
Posted by Pete Mortensen in Apple, How tos | 2 Comments »
11:03 pm, April 29th, 2007, Pete Mortensen
Apple owns the discourse around design and innovation these days. Everyone wants to be like Steve Jobs, and everyone wants to invent the new iPod. People also want to be Google, but being Google seems to be a lot harder, and the founders aren’t terribly charismatic, so Apple gets a lot more attention regardless.
As a result, and because of the world I live in at my day job, I get into a lot of discussions about the role of design strategy and the value of innovation. Specifically, that understanding what people really need is the best way to create new products, services and businesses that will really connect with people.
All of which is a preface to encourage you to check out a comment of mine that BusinessWeek Innovation honcho Bruce Nussbaum highlighted into a blog post over there. It was at the end of a business day, so I think I might sound a little more snarky than I meant to:
YouTube’s actual future is far from certain, and Second Life will surely be passed by another player, as it superceded The Sims, which superceded a lot of MUDDs and the like. Bill Moggridge even asked, “What is the YouTube of design?”
And I have to say, I don’t particularly care. YouTube, Second Life, Flickr, Vlogs, blogs, they’re all different solutions trying to meet some very core needs of people, whether they know it or not. And needs outlast solutions. I won’t perform a straight-up needs analysis on these sites, but they definitely come from wanting to express oneself creatively, connect with other people, feel famous or even lead a different life, as in the case of Lonely Girl 15 and some others.
By the time we start analyzing a solution, the next way to meet the needs it addresses is already underway. We’re going to miss the most important opportunities unless we see beyond the fun and exciting solution we hold in our hands.
Check it out.
Technorati Tags: nussbaum, design
Posted by Pete Mortensen in How tos | No Comments »
9:35 pm, February 26th, 2006, lkahney
iFixit has published a disassembly guide for the new MacBook Pro.
iFixit publishes a series of Fixit Guides for Apple laptop owners who want to fix their own machines. iFixit makes the guides in the hope customers will buy the spare parts from them. The guides are exceptional — well illustrated and very clear.
IFixit’s CEO Kyle Wiens writes:
We made some notes in the Guide about new and interesting things. Here’s the highlights:
* All major parts are new, and not backwards-compatible with
PowerBooks. This specifically includes the hard drive (SATA 9mm), and
the SuperDrive (4x Matsushita 9.5mm vs the previous 8x 12.7mm drive).
* I think Apple’s using Intel’s 945PM chipset (see
http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/85.1.16.html)
* Apple is using an Intel SATA controller
* The processor is soldered on, so it will be more difficult to
upgrade than the socketed Intel iMac
* The RAM is new, PC2-5300 DDR2
* Speedy 667 MHz bus and 2MB cache on the Core Duo
* The case is easier to get into than the PowerBook G4 15″.
Replacing some parts, like the hard drive or superdrive, will be easier.
Others are about the same, like the keyboard and display.
* Airport and bluetooth are on two separate cards again (they were
previously combined)
* Apple put temperature sensor boards on the heatsink and lower case
assembly:
http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/85/images_large/46.jpg
* iSight, infrared, and bluetooth are all USB.
* The internal case design is different from the PowerBook G4, but
not extensively so. I can tell it was inspired by a combination of the
15″ and 17″ designs.
I’m curious to see what people come up with off the part numbers on
the inside chips. We posted hi-res photos of the logic board:
Logic board top
Logic board bottom
Posted by lkahney in Apple, Hardware, How tos | 1 Comment »
9:24 pm, November 14th, 2005,
The iPod “Mega Helmet” was made by duct-taping a loud Radio Shack megaphone to an old motorcycle helmet, allowing its wearer to broadcast their taste in music to everyone in earshot. It also includes a microphone in the chin strap.
Its makers advise: “Go play softball wearing the helmet. It is very good for antagonizing the pitcher, and trash-talking in general. The helmet allows both for amplification of your voice, and playback of mp3s from the iPod.”
In the comments, someone else notes: “I’m Loving it! At the movie theater, not only can you block the view of the person sitting behind you but you can also make clever comments about the actors on the screen. Perhaps you could duct tape an egg timer to the side of the helmet to see how long it takes before you’re kicked out of the theater. I give it the maximum five star rating.”
(Via TUAW)
Posted by in How tos, Web, iPod | 1 Comment »
8:25 pm, November 13th, 2005,
For future reference, TUAW has some sage advice for selling a used Mac:
Sell it as soon as you can! The longer that Mac sits unused, the lower its price will be when you finally sell it. I’ve personally made that mistake several times, sitting on a used Mac for months (or even years) before finally getting around to listing it. It’s not a pleasant realization that your procrastination lost you hundreds or thousands of dollars.
Photo pinched from Ben Bardill.
Posted by in How tos, Web | 3 Comments »
8:17 pm, November 13th, 2005,
Shawn Morton has published a very handy howto for converting a classic Mac into a bog roll dispenser, or Apple iWipe. Now that’s time well spent.
One of my co-workers was giving away and old Atari 800XL and Macintosh SE case. He had been planning to do a mini-ITX project, but had never gotten around to it. Always wanting an excuse to tinker with something, I decided to take them off of his hands.
Well, as soon as I saw the Mac SE case, I realized that this one had the most potential. So this weekend, I bought a few things at Home Depot and got started making my Apple-power, wireless, portable toilet paper dispenser — the iWipe.
The whole project took a couple of hours and cost about $15.
Posted by in Apple, How tos, Web | 2 Comments »
8:43 pm, November 8th, 2005,
The French site MacBidouille has detailed step-by-step instructions for souping-up a 12-inch iBook and turning it into a something comparable to the 12-inch PowerBook — at a considerable saving.
It requires disassembing the iBook, swapping out the optical drive and hard drive, and adding Bluetooth and a ton of RAM. It takes a couple of hours, and “this transformation is not a piece of cake,” but:
All parts including the iBook have been purchased for 1,598 euros VAT included. To compare, the same iBook 80GB 5400rpm without the SuperDrive costs : 1,677.99 euros VAT included and the PB 12″ Superdrive 1.2 GB with 80 GB 5400rpm : 2,168 euros VAT included.
Posted by in Hardware, How tos | No Comments »
9:33 am, October 27th, 2005,
Over in the comments section of my other blog, reader Lone Star kindly posted the five steps needed to configure your illegally pirated copy of FrontRow, including a keyboard shortcut to launch it.
Click the link for Lone Star’s tutorial. Be warned, I haven’t tested it.
Read the rest of this post »
Posted by in How tos, Software | 18 Comments »
8:34 pm, October 18th, 2005,
If you’ve got an iPod nano, you also have a free case for it — the plastic wrapper it came in.
I’ve been using the see-through poly wrapper for a week or two and it’s proven quite functional. It covers both the scroll-wheel and screen, but is thin enough to use the scroll-wheel without taking it off. It protects from scratches, and the glue that holds it together is still sticky.
The only drawback is having to remove the wrapper to plug in the dock connector. Plus it looks kinda mental, like people who leave plastic wrappers on car seats.
What’s really needed is a bit of mental toughness; an acceptance of the fact that the nano will get scratched, and it matters naught.
(Picture lifted from WR276’s Flickr photostream).
Posted by in How tos, iPod | No Comments »
11:49 pm, October 5th, 2005,
There aren’t a lot of protective cases for the iPod nano in stores just yet. So here are some options for building your own. There’s a range of materials to choose from: gum wrappers, pleather or paper — whatever tickles your fancy.
Read the rest of this post »
Posted by in How tos, iPod | 3 Comments »
1:05 am, September 6th, 2005,
SafariStand is a free plug-in for Safari that adds a tabs sidebar for displaying thumbnails of open tabs in a left-hand sidebar.
Developed in Japan, the programmer says:
“English documentation is not available yet. But User Interface is almost English.”
Posted by in How tos, Software | 2 Comments »
