My name is Kris, and I'm the mind behind Funk-iSoft and the Mac OS X App Magic Media Marker. Magic Media Marker is an app for automating the very receptive tasks of converting and tagging TV Shows & Movies. Sure, you've heard of apps that do this this already like iFlicks & iDentify, so what sets MMM apart from the other guys? Automation!

Magic Media Marker's origin stems from a series of AppleScripts and Automator Folder actions put together to watch for incoming media files and automate the process of getting them ready for my AppleTV. The goal wasn't just to convert the video type, but also to apply artwork and other metadata to the files so they'd look nice in iTunes and on my various iDevices.

I started with tutorials for various aspects of what I wanted to do and built on top of it until I had a workflow that met my needs. My problems at this point is that it was a very custom set up that I couldn't easily share with people. No one wanted the hassle of settings all these scripts up and maintaing the system. That's when I decided I sit down and teach myself Objective C (the programming language used by OS X and iOS) to build my workflow into a single, easy to use app.

It took 3 months from opening a book on Objective C (and having no other programming background besides what I taught myself in AppleScript) until I had Magic Media Marker for sale in the Mac App Store. So what does Magic Media Marker do? Well, it will watch a folder and wait for new videos files to be dropped in. Once it picks up a video file it will automatically determine if it's a Movie or a TV Show by the file's name. It then downloads poster artwork, title, synopsis, genre, rating, etc and tags the file.

Optionally if your video files are not in the correct format for your iDevices you can link Magic Media Marker up with HandBrakeCLI and it will do the conversion for you as well. When it's all done it drops the video into iTunes into the appropriate library so it's ready to watch/sync. What's more is it will optionally look for TV Shows that have been watched, but not given a rating, and remove them from your iTunes library.

The idea being if there are shows that you will only watch once, leave them unrated and MMM will clear them out for you. All this is done without the need for user interaction, past initial set up, which only takes a minute. Although the focus of Magic Media Marker is automation, you can also manually feed MMM videos as well. Magic Media Marker is constantly being updated to improve the file naming conventions it understands and to add new features. I'm always interested in user feedback, many of the added features from version 1.0 were user suggestions.

For more information you can go here: http://www.funk-isoft.com

or check it out at the Mac app store here.

MacApper Editorial:

Kris did a great job of describing the application above as you would expect…  The application costs a modest $6.99 which seems like a really reasonable price for this type of help with organizing your iTunes media files. We haven't spent much time with this particular application so we would love to hear from fans or critics of the application out there to get a better feel for the benefits and/or disadvantages of using the application.

If you are a Mac or iOS developer, please take advantage of our developer submission program and we will do our best to follow up with you just like we did with Barry.

In addition to saving space, digital storage of pictures also allows for ease of sorting, labeling and organizing your photos. This is especially true for Mac users who have the iPhoto application. Your photos can be labeled in many different ways, depending on how you want to look for them.

1.     Faces – Facial recognition is used in the system to identify all your photos of one person. This can be a great feature when searching for photos for an event like a graduation party.

2.     Dates – When you import photos into iPhoto, it automatically sorts the photos by the date on which they were taken and labels these as 'Events'.

3.     Events – Since you may take photos of more than one event during a day, iPhoto also allows you to split photos from one day into more than one event. You can also combine several days into one event, such as a week of vacation. You can label each event to help you remember what that particular group of photos represents.

4.     Description – Each 'Event' in iPhoto also has a space for additional text to give a more detailed description of each event.

5.     Places – If you have a GPS feature on your camera, iPhoto will automatically label your pictures by location as well. If you don't have the GPS feature, you can still label your photos by location. You can then find all your photos from a given location regardless of when they were taken.

6.     Flags – When you pull up a group of photos by date, face, event or place, you can then flag specific photos to mark which ones you are wanting to select for printing or some other type of project.

7.     Last Import – iPhoto also has a record of your last import of pictures so it is easy to go back to the last group regardless of whether you know the date, location or people in that group of pictures.

8.     Albums – You can also group pictures into 'Albums', just like you would your printed pictures. You can selected pictures and drag them into your album and label it accordingly.

9.     Smart Albums – The 'Smart Album' feature is a filtering feature for creating albums of pictures that all meet certain criteria, such as the same face and at a certain location. This can save you from hunting for them yourself.

10.  Uploaded Photos – If you upload photos to the facebook, flickr or MobileMe, iPhoto will keep track of which photos you uploaded to which site and on what date.

If you haven't taken time to learn about all the ways you can use iPhoto to keep your photos organized, this should convince you to do a quick run through of the tutorial. It isn't really complicated, it is very easy. If you have a Mac, you might as well take advantage of these great organizational tools. The first time you need to go looking for specific pictures, you'll be glad you did.

Did you know that the iPhone has a secret redial button?  It’s true! and it’s hidden in the call button on the virtual keypad.  If you just dialed a number in the Phone app’s keypad section, just tap the big green “Call” button once to load the number back in and once again to redial the last number.  This will not work if you’ve dialed a number from the Favorites, Recents, or Contacts tab.

As you may or may not know, Pastebot: Tapbot’s clipboard manager for the iPhone syncs to your Mac with help from a small preference pane called Pastebot Sync.  What you may not know is that you can sync with multiple Macs.  Say you use your desktop at home to write an essay, but need to take your essay writing on the go.  So you transfer your essay to your MacBook and of course bring your iPhone along. All you have to do is install the preference pane on your MacBook, and add a new machine to you iPhone’s “Computers” list.  Tap on the machine you wish to sync to and BAM!  You’re ready to go!  You then can switch back to your desktop when you’re back at home.  Like it says at the bottom of the sync screen, you can only sync with one machine at a time but you can register as many computers as you want.  You can find Pastebot at the AppStore here.

1. Take a picture of an area of the screen.  This is by far my favorite shortcut.  If you press Command + shift + 4 you can select the area of the screen that you want to take a picture of.   By default it will save the image to your desktop but you can change the default destination.  Now, some extra great features for Leopard users follow:
   1. Command + shift + 4 and then press your spacebar to lock the size and then move the window around a bit before saving the image.
   2. Command + shift + 4 and the Option key will allow you to make the selection bigger expanding all sides from the center.
   3. Command + shift + 4 and then the shift key again will allow you to resize one edge of the selected area.
   4. Shift + control + command +4 will take a screenshot of a selected area and copy it to the clipboard.
2. Take a picture of your whole screen.  This is a great feature especially for tutorials.  If you press Command + shift + 3 your current screen will be captured and saved to your default folder.  The only other feature available for a full screenshot is to press Shift + control + command + 3 to capture your entire screen and copy it to your clipboard (so you can paste it into any document).
3. You can modify the default format of screenshots. By default the format of screenshots are dependent on the OS.  In Jaguar it is .jpg, in Panther it is .pdf, and in Tiger onwards it is .png.  You can however change the default format by doing the following:
• Open up a Terminal (Applications>>Utilities>>Terminal).
• Type the following code at the prompt:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture type jpg
killall SystemUIServer

4. You can use the Preview application.  You can also take a screenshot by opening up the standard Mac Preview application (Applications>>Preview).  You get all the options mentioned above.  Open up the application, go to the File menu and select Take Screen Shot (pick full screen, partial area, or window).  It’s really that simple.

Another reason that I like this functionality so much is that it is FREE. All you have to do is know that it exists and unlike PC users (they have to buy an application to get these same capabilities), we can do it right out of the box.  Yet another advantage for us MAC users.

UPDATED FOR IPHONE USERS

iPhone users can also take a screenshot really easily. So if you want to prove that you got the highest score on a particular game or just need to show someone something cool that your iPhone can do, you do it by using the buttons shown in this picture:

For iPhone 4 devices, you press the bottom button (home) and hold then just quickly press and release the top button (sleep). For older phones you press and hold both the home and sleep buttons until you hear the camera click.

Then the good folks over at Mac OS X Hints found out what the culprit was before I could find it. Apparently, MOSH (Mac OS X Hints) discovered that the issue arises because iTunes continuously changes the conversion date of the songs that have been already converted after you play them. Good news is, if you are experiencing the same issue that me and my circle is having, you don’t have to wait for Apple to issue an update through Software Update. In fact, you can download it right now.

First, to know whether or not you are having (if you haven’t already noticed) or are going to have this problem when you choose to convert your songs to conserve space on your device, do the following:

Open iTunes

Go to the Menu Bar and select About iTunes

When the About iTunes panel appears, check for the version and the build number. If your version is iTunes 9.1.1 (11), you have the iTunes firmware that doesn’t have that wrinkled ironed out yet.

To get the iTunes update that has that issue resolved, do the following:

Go to apple.com/itunes

Click on the free download button and download the iTunes software from the site.

Install the software…

…and you’re done!

This version of iTunes doesn’t reveal itself in Mac OS X’s Software Update, for some odd reason. However, once you download it, sync your iDevice to you Mac or PC and then you should notice the reconversion error no longer shows its face. Your back to the zippy sync sessions that iTunes usually puts out. We here at MacApper just thought that we should fill you guys in on that. Enjoy!

Repairing disk permissions goes through and corrects any errors with any permissions, which will make buggy applications correct themselves, and could speed up the overall performance of your mac.

To repair permissions first get to your utilities folder by clicking go in the finder, then selecting utilities.

Once in utilities open up disk utility.
In the left hand column select your hard drive.
Next select the first aid tab.
From there click Repair Disk Permissions

There is no need to click Verify Disk Permissions, selecting Repair Disk Permissions will verify and repair. This could take 5 minutes to 30 minutes, maybe longer depending on how long it has been since the permissions have been repaired. It is good to generally do this once a month, after you install an application, or run an update.

Best of all, Wireshark is available for absolutely free, no strings attached. It’s quite amazing the work that goes into this program, and networking aficionados all over the world continue to develop this killer network utility.

One drawback though, for some, is the process of actually getting it running properly in 10.6. I had trouble myself, and felt I needed to share the process I used to get it up and running in Snow Leopard.

Let me just share my setup first of all. I’m running Snow Leopard on a MacBook Pro (late 2009), with a 2.26 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and the standard allotment of 2 GB of RAM. Your individual results may vary if you’re coming at this from a different operating system. Feel free to leave a comment if you’ve got a different setup and this isn’t working for you, and I’d be glad to help you out as best I can. So without much further ado:

Things you’ll need to get started (with this tutorial):

Administrator privileges on a Mac running OS 10.6
Wireshark (FREE – get it HERE)

The information you’ll need is in this here video. However, I’ve outlined the major steps needed to do it below the video. Again, feel free to leave any variation of “this didn’t work for me.” in the comments.

1.) Download, Mount, Copy Wireshark to Applications folder
2.) Copy CHModBPF folder into StartupItems directory
3.) Show hidden files and folders
4.) Navigate to /usr/local – if no /bin exists, you’ll need to create one¦
5.) Enter Terminal and type the line: cd /usr/local
6.) Hit enter and type: sudo mkdir “bin”
7.) From the Command Line folder that is in the disk image, copy all of the binary files themselves into /usr/local/bin
8.) In Terminal, enter the following line and hit enter: cd /Library/StartupItems
9.) Then: sudo chown -R root:wheel ChmodBPF
10.) Open Wireshark and navigate to Edit>Preferences>Name Resolution>SMI (MIB and PIB Paths) and click Edit
11.) Click New and enter: usr/share/snmp/mibs
12.) Click OK, then Apply, then reboot your Mac.

Once your machine comes back up, you should be good to go!

Disclaimer: We do not endorse using Wireshark or any other network monitoring utility for illegal purposes.

1.) Keep Track of Your Work and Responsibilities

If you’re a student, or just have a lot of projects to keep track of, make sure you check out our article on 5 Apps For Staying Productive At School, where you’ll find our recommendations for assignment wrangling. Having one of these apps is invaluable, no one can remember everything all of the time. For a more simplified to-do manager, check out Remember The Milk. It’s an internet-synced to-do manager that will sync with as many computers as you want. Just set up your account, install one of the many services RTM offers, and get organized.

2.) Sync and Organize Your Digital Devices

iTunes is great for the iPods and iPhones in your life, but what about your other devices? You have a few options. Use the junkware that came with them to sync your music, photos, and movies, or take charge with a Mac application that makes its living from picking up where inadequate software leaves off. One answer lies in DoubleTwist (Mac OS X – Free). An open-source project that is still under heavy development, DoubleTwist supports Archos media players, the Palm Pre, Sony PSP, INQ1, G1 and Android phones, select Nokia, Motorola, and Sony Ericsson phones, as well as Blackberry, WinMo 5.0 and 6.0, as well as iPod and iPhone models! Just drag and drop for file and playlist transfer to your mobile device. New devices are being supported all the time, and you can request a feature or device in their forums.

3.) Get Access To Your Computers From Anywhere!

An important aspect of being organized is having easy access to all of your information and tools that you need to get things done. Several Mac apps make this idea easy to implement. Start with a solid VNC app for remote control of your computers from any corner of the globe. Try out the free apps JollysFastVNC or Chicken of the VNC, which we featured in our huge list of awesome Mac Freeware from last year (many applications in there are still very relevant today). Both will let you see and control your home or work computers from anywhere with an internet connection.

Also, grab an FTP client for easy transfer of files across your computers. I fully recommend downloading the free Cyberduck or the $28 YummyFTP, both of which work equally well in my own (and others) experiences, for file transfer to your website or personal machines.

4.) Back Up Your Files…twice.

If you aren’t doing this by now, get to it. Like, as soon as you’re done reading this paragraph. I cannot stress the importance of having multiple backups of your stuff. Having another copy of your data off-site (away from home, work, wherever) is equally important, and can save you in the case of a fire, Act of God, or robbery. In addition to Apple’s own Time Machine, there are many online services available, such as Dropbox (2GB Free; plus Paid tiers for more storage) and Mozy(2GB free as well as paid levels with more storage). Both do a great job of running silently from the menu bar, backing your stuff up to their servers as you go. So go get one! I think I hear a tornado coming…

5.) Keep your Mac up-to-date with AppFresh.

Spend less time keeping all your applications updated! Let AppFresh take care of it for you! AppFresh is a free indispensable utility that will index your applications and find their updates, all you have to do is click download and it installs them for you! Just run it once a week or so, and enjoy an quick update experience.

6.) Lock Down Your Finances

Whether or not you choose to do this completely digitally, there is something to be said for a software solution to one of human-kind’s most stressful topics – money. There are standalone apps to help you wrap your head around where you’re spending all that hard-earned dough (that thing you’re typing on, maybe?). For that, I recommend apps like SEE Finance($20), iCash($39.90), and even Quicken 2007($69.99) can help you get ahold of and track your finances. These apps serve their purpose well, and are all worth at the very least a look-see. From simple budgeting to keeping track of interest and investments, they’ll provide a good user experience and some allow you to download transactions from your bank’s website.

If you want to see up the minute updates with your current balances and lines of credit in an easy to see visual environment, I recommend Mint (free). Being able to have everything in front of you is invaluable. Mint provides you with complete breakdown of all your account activity over time, and gives you readouts of where you currently stand, all in a cross-platform web interface. It can’t get much easier than this, folks.

If you’re having trouble coming up with an idea for a unique image for stand-by time, look no further as we dream up 5 fresh ideas for iPhone wallpaper.  And be sure to check out our comments for even more ideas from our readers!

The Space Age – The 1950′s was a special time.  World War II had ended, business was booming across America, and for the first time ever the world was on the brink of reaching the stars.  This lead to a boom in popular discussion and popular culture about what the future would look like.  Flying cars, houses on the moon, jetpacks — nothing was impossible!  And while the fantastic world we dreamed of more than 50 years ago never came to pass, artifacts of that idealized future can still be found strewn across the internet.  Why not check out some images of what we thought the future would look like and shrink them down to 320×480?

Telephones – The iPhone is many things to many people.  Email, GPS, Facebook, video camera…  the list goes on and on.  But how many of us actually use the thing as a phone?  Maybe you should choose a wallpaper that reminds you of its intended use.  The neat thing is, thanks to the long and storied history of the telephone, there are limitless possibilities for a hip photo opportunity.  Hand-crank phones, rotary phones, big ol’ 1980′s-style mobile phones — you name it, there’s a picture online.

Comic Book Covers – As a big comic book nerd growing up, it’s pretty easy for me to link great art with great comics.  Few things are as iconic or as personal  to a comics reader as a favorite cover, so why not share yours with the world?  Getting good scans of old comics covers used to be hard, but since 2006 one website has made it easy to find any comic cover you might be looking for – CoverBrowser.com.  With nearly half a million covers to choose from, I had very little difficulty in tracking down a specific Detective Comics cover that’s been haunting me since I was a kid.  Thanks CoverBrowser!

The Cold War – It may sound like a strange notion at first, but the Cold War brought to life some of the most unique imagery of the last 100 years.  Gas masks.  Soviet propaganda.  ICBM’s.  If you grew up any time before the fall of the Berlin Wall, you no doubt remember the daily threat of global thermonuclear war that quietly hung over all our heads.  Despite the terror it invoked at the time there’s a real kitsch nostalgia to the era and a rich photographic history to go along with it.  A quick search can find anything from Mickey Mouse breathing apparatuses to rusty old fallout shelter signs.

Video Game Art – I know what you’re thinking — using the latest screenshot from the hottest game just feels overdone and tacky.  But if you’re a gamer at heart and want to show some street cred, why not try and track down some tasteful shots or stellar fan art to show of your love of all things playable?  The screen above is a clip from 2008′s indie darling World of Goo (now available for Mac!) and offers up a great vibe without ever really feeling too fanboyish.  If you’re looking for fan art instead, you should do some searches on DeviantArt (here’s a personal favorite by NoBullet).

- – -

As you have probably guessed by now, these are just one geek’s ideas and clearly cater to my own personal tastes. Maybe you loved these suggestions, maybe you hated them.  No matter how you felt I just hope it got you thinking a little bit more about the personality that can be added to every iPhone with just a simple image search on the web.

You’ve seen our ideas, but we’d love to see yours!  Tell us what you like to put on your iPhone standby screen.  Link to wallpapers you’ve used and loved.  Tear down that curtain and show us how cool your iPhone can be!

—

A Few Words About iPhone Wallpaper: Setting your wallpaper is as easy as choosing an image from your Photos app and selecting wallpaper, but formatting it isnt always so easy.  You can always zoom and crop on the device, but if you want something thats going to really shine youll probably want to do some fiddling in a proper program.  Whether you prefer Photoshop, GIMP, or some free web-based alternative, you just need to know one thing:  iPhone wallpaper is 320×480 pixels.  Work within those dimensions and youre good to go no matter what image you choose.  (On a side note:  all of the wallpapers featured in this articles have been sized to 320×480, so they’re ready to use.)

Resources – While we’ve mentioned DeviantArt and CoverBrowser, there are a number of other simple but prolific options out there for finding great images.  Flickr is a terrific resource, as is the simple Google Image Search.  Check out different online communities and see what’s out there in the world of photography and art!

Whether we want it to happen or not, our systems all get a little sluggish from time to time.  Sometimes it’s a full hard drive slowing things down.  Other times we just simply need more memory for the modern apps than our Mac came installed with.  But for all those other times when things just need a quick tweak and tidy?  We’ve put together a quick list of five easy steps that should help get your Mac running like it’s factory fresh.

1. Do a widget inventory. Widgets are easy to forget about.  On a rainy afternoon you may add half-a-dozen just to check them out and then completely forget that they exist by the next morning.  But some of those widgets will keep running even when you’re not using your dashboard.  It’s always best to keep your widgets, like the rest of your digital life, stripped down to only what you’re actually using.

2. Declutter your desktop. Windows users enjoy the luxury of having a small army of icons cluttering up their desktop without any ill effects.  Us Mac users aren’t so lucky.  Each icon on your desktop is treated by OSX as its own window.  Same goes for the items on your dock.  And while having a handful of icons on your desktop probably won’t make a noticeable impact on overall performance, a full desktop will.  Time to get those organized and off the desktop!  (just a sidenote, this one shouldn’t help Leopard users.  It looks like OSX 10.5 finally tackled this problem.)

3. Keep an eye on the Activity Monitor. While this may sound like common sense, you’d be surprised at how many little programs are eating up big chunks of your memory.  The massive slowdown that prompted my most recent clean up was the result of a tiny little background application I used for PS3 media streaming eating up more than half of my systems available resources.  While I don’t have a fix for the program, disabling did provide an easy fix for my system.  Had I not checked the Activity Monitor I would have been losing my mind over this one.

4. Turn off unused features. Remember that time last Spring you turned on Bluetooth to get that picture off your mobile phone?  Or that roommate that wanted to jack your signal via internet sharing? Did you remember to turn them off?  Take a hunt through your System Preferences and make sure everything you don’t actually use is disabled (but if you’re not sure, and we can’t stress this enough, don’t disable it.  We’d hate to see you switch off something you needed and not be too sure on how to get it back).

5. Delete unused preference panes. Every now and then we download programs that install preference panes, and then forget all about them.  The real problem?  Lot’s of these will load in the background at startup.  Luckily it should be as easy as a right click to remove.  If it’s not you can always manually delete them by going to / Library / PreferencePanes.

A lot of this is probably common sense, but it never hurts to see it spelled out.  What tips and tricks have you found help you get the best performance out of your Mac?

In order to use Summarize, you need to be on a native OS X program such as Preview, TextEdit, Safari, Mail, etc. If you are in one of these programs, getting your summary takes just a second and it is fully customizable. If you are not in one of these programs, simply copy and paste your text over into TextEdit and you will be able to use it hassle free. To get started, simply select the text that you want summarized, navigate up to the menu-bar, and drop down the menu by selecting the name of the current application that you are on. In this sub-menu you will find the “services” section. From there, you can select Summarize. The summary box will look something like this:

As you can see, you will be able to edit how long you want the summary to be and if you want it in sentences or paragraphs. The accuracy of the summaries has actually been quite impressive in my past experience with this great feature.

Most of the features that we will be discussing can be found in System Preferences > Trackpad. Unfortunately, out of the box, the new MacBooks come with a lot of the multi-touch features turned off. So unless you know to go to this preference pane right away, you might be a bit frustrated with the new trackpad. This would especially stand true for a new Mac user who is used to two buttons and the old style trackpad. However, when you fully enable all of the cool features on the new glass trackpad, you will never want to go back to the older version. In my case, I never want to use a mouse again (except for when gaming).

So, let’s navigate to the Trackpad Preference Pane and get to the screen pictured below:

Now you have the ability to turn your trackpad into something much more useful. First off, highlighting each feature selection will show a short video of each feature in action. The one-finger options are fairly self-explanatory. ’Tap to Click’ will allow you to simply tap on the track pad to click instead of having to push the button down. I use this feature a lot more than fully clicking the button down. ’Dragging’ and ‘Drag Lock’ allow you to tap once and then drag anything around your desktop.

My personal favorite option is ‘Secondary Tap’. This has been around on OS X for awhile, but some people I talk to do not know about it. This allows you to mimic a right mouse click by simply tapping two fingers on your trackpad at the same time.

The most powerful options come with the three- and four-finger options. Swiping three fingers left or right allows you to go forward or backward in any given application. This works wonderfully in your browser, as it can be used for previous page navigation. As for four-fingered options, you can swipe four fingers up to show your desktop, four fingers down to enter “show all windows” expose mode, or swipe left and right in order to switch applications. Some hidden gems include: allowing you to pinch in and out with two fingers while in an application in order to zoom in and out and being able to rotate images using two fingers.

While most Mac power users will already know about these features, many new Mac users can use nearly all of these new features to their advantage in making their MacBook experience more enjoyable.

What this feature does not do, however, is fix the wonkiness of Mail.app’s Similar Messages feature. It is supposed to find messages in the same thread as others, but it really just searches by title. If you have two messages titled “Hello,” or “Re: Hello,” then they will be considered part of the same thread. Still, this can be a great and very helpful feature.

Evernote is a multi-platform note application sent to us from the productivity gods. The benefit of Evernote is that one can access and upload notes from a Mac, a PC, a  Windows Mobile or iPhone, and anything with a web browser. Evernote can even recognize handwritten or printe text from photos and scanned notes, making them searchable. This functionality will aid me significantly in my two week quest to bring my document clutter to more machines.

It should be “noted” that at present, Evernote only handles the following imported file types: GIF, JPG, PNG, WAV, MP3, PDF. This doesn’t allow Evernote to handle all documents, but there is hope. Evernote Support’s public notebook suggests more file type support for arbitrary file attachments for Premium accounts by the end of this year. Thus, I will be adding a premium account to my Christmas wishlist for this year.

My web browser piles the majority of files into my document drop box. Step one is to channel the majority of this pile into Evernote.

For starters, add the Evernote webclipper to your browser bookmark bar or install the firefox extension and use it frequently.

Next, if you use Firefox, open up your preferences window and click on the Applications tab. Search for supported file types and select the “Use Evernote” option.

Finally, instead of using the nifty Save to PDF option in your print window, why not use the Save PDF to Evernote option and save a step?

These three tips are just the beginning of using Evernote to your synchronization advantage. I’d love to read some comments on unleashing the potential of this note storage monster.

Evernote provides a free maximum montly upload of 40mb with no storage limit as well as free clients for desktop, web browser, and smartphones.  You can upgrade to a 500mb maximum monthly upload for either $5 per month or $45 for the year.

Head over to the Keyboard & Mouse Preference Pane, and on the bottom of the Keyboard Shortcuts pane, you should see the option for “Full Keyboard Access.” Simply click on the option for “All Controls” and you should now be able to start tabbing through dialog boxes and windows. Alternatively, you can use the keyboard combination of Ctrl+F7 to enable this feature. When you see a little blue ring around any dialog options, you can tab through them to select a different option. You can use Shift+Tab to go backwards, and the Space bar to replicate the mouse click. This simple option makes it nice and quick to deal with one moderately annoying default “feature” of Mac OS X.

By heading over to the Security preference pane in the System Preferences app, there’s an option to “Require password to wake this computer from sleep or screen saver”. When this is checked, you’ll be prompted to enter your password every time you wake from sleep or try to return to the main screen after the screen saver has been active.

For an even quicker way, you can head over to the Expose & Spaces preference pane and enable a hot corner for the screen saver. I currently have one set up for the upper right hand corner, as I don’t really ever click on the Spotlight icon and instead just use a keyboard shortcut for whenever I need to quick search for something.

An additional layer of security can be easily added. You can choose to disable the Automatic Login feature of OS X that allows you to bypass the main login window and go directly to the selected user’s desktop. While this feature is especially handy when you’re at home and don’t have to worry about anyone messing around on your machine (hopefully), it can be a major vulnerability when you’re away at school. I know that I didn’t want my roommates to be able to get into my computer, and this was a simple little way to ensure that my stuff was secure.

Upon opening, Stacks In Da Place automatically detects your currently set up stacks and shows you the default icon. Adding an icon (such as one of the various “Drawer” icons) is as simple as dragging and dropping. (You can find the “Drawers” here)

After a few seconds, your Dock should restart and your stack should now be enclosed by a new icon. This creates a much cleaner look, and adds a cool visual effect to the whole idea of stacks.

Should you decide that you don’t like your stack icon, removing it is as simple as clicking on the stack from the left panel and choosing “Delete Icon”.

This app is really very simple, but it does its job well. Stacks In Da Place is a free download from MacXeagle.

On most Apple apps, simply command clicking will allow you to take the icon right off the menubar so that you have some more screen real estate available. You’ll see the familiar “poof” effect once it’s gone.

However, in some of the other non-Apple apps, it’s not as simple, but hardly a hassle. By visiting the preferences (command+comma) pane of most applications, there’s a little check mark box to show notifications in the menubar. Simply uncheck this box, and voila, the information up on the top of the screen should be gone.

I hope that this tip makes it a little easier to keep things clean on your Mac and stay organized in the process.

For the people that don’t feel like shelling out for Apple’s push-enabled MobileMe service, Google offers a highly competitive set of services that rival Apple’s. For the low price of $0.00, you can have all of your iCal appointments synced up to the cloud. Additionally, any changes you make to Google Calendar online will be pushed down to your iCal calendar on your Mac. While it doesn’t offer the same instantaneous changes as MobileMe claims to offer, the 15 minute interval default sync time should be more than enough for some.

Integrating Google Calendar with iCal is as simple as adding an account to your iCal preferences. After you open the preferences in iCal, click on the Accounts tab. Hit the “+” button to get the “Add an Account” dialog box. For the username option, put in your full Gmail address (including the @gmail.com), followed by your password. Additionally, you have to put in the address for the Account URL. This address can be found here: https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/[YOUR USERNAME]/user (just replace the [YOUR USERNAME] with your own Gmail address). Again, this should include the “@gmail.com” at the end of it.

After following those simple steps, you should be up and running. You can sync manually by clicking Command+R and you can also change the sync interval. With the iPhone Google interface, and Google Sync app for BlackBerry, you can truly have your calendars in sync everywhere. I have a strong feeling that Apple will allow native syncing to the iPhone with a future update. That would make it even easier to make sure that you never have a reason for missing an appointment again.

The basics of Grab are very simple, and it can be operated by knowing two keyboard shortcuts: Command+Shift+3 and Command+Shift+4. For one who needs a quick ‘shot to send a friend, use Command+Shift+3. Command+Shift+3 takes an instant picture of the whole user’s visible screen and places the PNG image on the Desktop for easy sharing. These pictures can be uploaded to a web server, emailed, or even sent through iChat. Command+Shift+4 gives the user a little bit more flexibility with his or her screenshot. It changes the mouse into a cross hair giving the ability to select what makes it into the final picture. Just move the mouse to the starting position, click the mouse, and drag to the ending location. If you change your mind about taking the screenshot, just press the escape key. The escape key will cancel the screenshot any time between the pressing of the shortcut and the actual taking of the screenshot. As an added bonus, press Command+Shift+3/4 in order for your screen capture to be copied directly to the clipboard and not your desktop.

Many times, one just needs a screen grab of one window on their screen. It would be a bit excessive to take a picture of the whole screen, and using plain Command+Shift+4 would create a distracting border around the window. After pressing Command+Option+Shift+4, press Space for “Window Capture Mode.” Your mouse will become a camera that allows you to select the window you want. As an added bonus, you can use the camera to take a picture of dock icons, the menubar, and even desktop icons.

For those who wish to take screen capturing to the next level, you may use these “secret” modifier keys. These modifiers can only be used while one has pressed Command+Shift+4 and begun selecting the area he wishes to capture. If you have the perfect size selection for your snapshot, press and hold the Space bar to keep the selection size but move it to different areas of the screen. Holding down the Shift key in place of the Space bar will lock either the vertical or horizontal component of your already-selected snapshot area. This can be handy in scenarios where one has the correct height of his soon-to-be snapshot chosen, but not the width. Additionally, the Option key can be held after one has pressed Command+Shift+4 to cause the selection area to resize from the center of the area. Lastly, holding down Shift/Option+Space causes Shift’s or Option’s effect to occur while adding in the Space’s function of moving the selection box around the screen.

Mastering these controls can allow any user to take flawless screenshots to share with the world. Please share with me in the comments how you use these functions on your Mac.

Time Machine is part of the Finder (thinking a little outside the box), as it is basically an extension of the Finder’s functionality, so why not make it a little bit more part of the Finder – Drag the Time Machine icon, from the Applications folder onto the top pane of the Finder window, et voilà! – you can remove it from your dock, and still have a quick way back to the past

One way to run workflows straightaway is to open them with Automator Runner. Right click (ctrl-click) on the workflow to access the Open With menu.

If you find that you’re always using this feature for a certain workflow, you may opt to always open the workflow with Automator Runner. You can enable this by using the same moves listed above, but choose “Other…” instead. Select Automator Runner in System/Library/Core Services and be sure to tic the “Always Open With” box.

Workflows may be incorporated into Finder use by saving the workflow as a Finder plug-in. To do this, choose “Save As Plug-in” from the file menu. Be sure to select “Finder” from the drop down menu. You’ll be able to access the workflow from right clicking (ctrl-click) objects in the finder. This works well if you want to convert image files or move files to the Applications folder with a couple of clicks.

You can also save the workflow as an application. This means that you can execute workflows from the dock, as login items, or from the finder without having to open Automator. I use this to connect to my MBP at home when I startup my Mac Pro at work.

Finally, you could use Quicksilver to execute workflows. Be sure to install the Automator Module as this will allow automatic execution of workflows from the Quicksilver pane. Using Quicksilver means that you can also use keystrokes (aka triggers) to execute workflows.

Automator takes the redundancy out of work on your Mac, and running a workflow doesn’t have to be redundant either. How many times can I say the word redundant before it becomes redundant?

Two years ago, Adam Betts re-designed a few elements of Google Earth’s interface. I just recently came across his blog post, and I thought I would share it with all of you.

The instructions to modify these interface elements are quite simple. First, you need to get the files from Adam’s site and unzip them. Second, find Google Earth in your Applications folder. Right-click on it, and select “Show Package Contents. This will bring you into the core of files that make up Google Earth.

Once inside, open up the folder you downloaded from Adam’s site. This folder has two more folders inside of it, with pretty straightforward instructions. The contents of one folder needs to go inside of “Resources and the contacts of the other folder needs to go inside “MacOS>res. When you drag the contents of each folder into the location specified, you will get an alert asking whether to replace the files that are already there or not. Select the “Apply to All box and click replace.

Upon opening Google Earth after you have added the new files, you will be greeted with a bit of a re-vamped interface. It isn’t anything major, as Adam said it wasn’t worth his effort to re-do the entire interface if he wasn’t getting paid. Maybe Google will finally take that as a cue to hire him and make the interface more Mac-like.

If you have been waiting for Google to tweak the Google Earth interface for a while now, this is about as good as it gets for now. This little tweak is free, and the files are available on Adam Betts’ blog.

In just a couple easy steps you’ll have all sorts of fun new fonts to play around with, and you’ll have no more excuses to use Comic Sans or Papyrus.

Step 1:
You first have to find the fonts online to download. Dafont and Fonts 500 are two great resources for free fonts. Almost all the fonts you’ll find are in the TrueType (TTF) format, which Apple created in the ’80s and is used widely on both Macs and PCs to this day.

Step 2:
It’s a good thing I’m not paid by the word, because Apple has made this far too easy. Double click on the .ttf file and Font Book will pop open and ask you to install it. One more click and you’re done! The font will now appear in the fonts window in every program you use. On a PC you would need to restart programs like Photoshop to see the new fonts, but not in OS X, they should be instantly available.

Be Aware: Although these fonts are free to download and use for personal projects, the creators may have some restrictions on their commercial use. I put all the fonts I download a separate folder in Font Book so I’ll remember to check before I use in a way that is potentially against its terms of use.

I’ve spent a lot of time collecting fonts, and I’ve posted some of my favorites here, here, and here if you’re interested.

I have four email accounts that I use the most, which means I have four different mailboxes that I check often. When using mail.app, the left sidebar of your mail.app application can become a mess with all of its folders. I decided to figure out a way to make my four mailboxes, one.

As some of you may already know, you can create one account in mail.app and in the email address field on the “Account Information” tab, you can enter a comma delimited list of all your email addresses. However, you may not know that if your .mac account is the primary account you use, the comma delimited option will not work.

But there is a solution that you can use with your .mac email account in mail.app:

First, you will need to forward your email accounts to your .mac email address. Now, if you use Google Apps or Gmail, under the “Forwarding and POP/IMAP” tab, you can put in your .mac email address and then you should choose to archive your account’s copy of the message. You will want to do this in case you need to search for an old message that is no longer available in your mail client.

Second, create your .mac email account in mail.app. You will then want to create different signatures for your different identities. Now in order to create different identities, you will need to add your outgoing servers for each email account. Make sure to give a description of each account, and I will explain why a little later. Please take note that the different outgoing servers serve as your different identities.

Third, on the “Account Information tab for your .mac email account, you will need to choose your .mac outgoing server. Unless your do so, your signatures will not be saved to the .mac account you created. When composing or replying to a message, a list of available outgoing servers (identities) will populate on the left just below the subject field. This is why you need to give a description for each of your outgoing servers (i.e. Personal, Work).

If not, it will give you a list like smtp.googlemail.com. That might work if you only have one, but if you are like me and have three (Google App and/or Gmail accounts), you will need to give them a description in order to know from what email address your message will be sent.

By using this method (or the other method if .mac is not your primary account), mail.app will be much cleaner and uncluttered. Also, it will help with your work flow. Lastly, you should create two folders: a hold folder and an action folder. Your hold folder should contain the messages you need to reference to at a later date. The action folder should contain the messages that need immediate attention. You can create an archive folder to archive your old messages, but this is not needed if you use Google Apps or Gmail.

The only painstaking task is that when you are composing a new email message or replying to an email message, you will need to choose the identity from the drop down list as well as the signature from the drop down list. Perhaps there is an applescript or rule that can be written to make this automated for you? If I come up with something, I will definitely make it known. Now, go and have fun with mail.app.

So while we wait impatiently, why not brush up on the basics by playing the original StarCraft in the mean time?

Unfortunately there’s a big obstacle: the game was initially released for Mac OS 9. While this isn’t a big deal for older PowerPC-based Macs that can run archaic software using the Classic emulator, the newer Intel systems are left out in the cold. So how can we relive the glory days of low-resolution, last century gaming?

Luckily Blizzard has got us covered. Buried away on the developer’s support site is a link to the Mac OS X Native Installer. Using this application and your dusty, old StarCraft disc, you can get a Carbon version of the game running on any Mac. Intel systems will use Rosetta emulation, but you won’t notice much slowdown since the game isn’t very processor intensive. This trick, however, won’t work for the StarEdit campaign editor, so budding creators should turn to the more advanced editor found in WarCraft III  or you could just wait out StarCraft II’s release.

StarCraft lets you choose from three armies, each with unique fighting abilities. The Terran is the basic human group, complete with traditional marines, tanks, aircrafts and nuclear missiles. The Protoss is a powerful race whose buildings and many of its units require battery power to operate at full capacity. Finally the Zergs spit green acid and normally travel in massive groups due to their ability to produce units quickly.

I was pleasantly surprised to find I could still jump on Battle.net almost 10 years since I first played and find people to compete against online. Granted the majority of them only spoke Korean and devoured my Terran army in a few minutes, but it’s still a fun way to relive years past.

Blizzard also offers an OS X installer for Diablo II. If you have trouble running it on an Intel Mac even after using the native installer, hold the Option key when launching the app, and set the video options to “software.” Now you should be good to go to Hell and battle Satan. Just make sure to watch out for high-level bullies who try to smack down newbies.

Recent releases of StarCraft and Diablo II include the native installers on the disc, so if you bought your copy recently, hopefully you can look forward to going online and seeing new players, who dug their old copies out of the closet.

The integration between iChat and Address Book is something that never ceases to amaze me. Users are able to drag and drop Address Book listings into a category in their buddy list and screenames contained therein are populated. AIM has been able to transmit text messages since 2003, but iChat and Adium are able to handle these plus signs and numbers with grace and organizational ease. Here’s how you can organize your contacts in Address Book so that you can reach them by IM when online and SMS when they sign off.

Start with a contact that has a mobile number in your address book:

Hit the edit button and add another screename for your contact using their mobile number. You’ll need to remove the hyphens from the number and add a +1 to the front of the number like this:

Click the edit button to seal the deal, and in true Apple style you can just drag and drop the address card into your buddy list and iChat takes care of the rest.

If your buddy is online, iChat will send your IMs through their active screename and when their offline (as shown above) your IM will go directly to their mobile. If they respond, you’ll see it pop up in the chat window. Say your contact is online and you want to text them anyway; click the drop down menu at the top of your chat window to select their mobile number and text away.

In the not so distant past, iChat would log mobile numbers numerically in the buddy list by default. I can’t remember the lyrics to “The Bear Went over the Mountain” let alone whose phone number is which. Compiling multiple screen names under a single contact is brilliance, and taking away my reasons for leaving my notebook and searching for my mobile, aka physical activity, is as refreshing as two swiss cake rolls and a pint of Guinness.

If you can feel where I’m going with this click the jump.

If you haven’t heard of the game Guitar Hero, please step out from under the rock you have been living under, and give it a try. It is an incredible game. You know it’s a great game when you can watch people play and be just as entertained as playing the game yourself. My in-laws have neighbors who are all good at the game. They sit around and pass the plastic guitar around and make musical magic. My eyes widened as I was subjected to star power, whammy bars, boos and standing ovations. This was definitely something that I could be obsessed with.

“But wait,” I thought, “I play guitar for real…” Still thinking, “Why not spend the time learning how to really shred like… Weezer?” The thing is, these guitar solos are just way to face-melting to learn in real time. I need some way to slow it down to a manageable tempo. After some considerable searching, I found a way to do this with GarageBand and some demo software.

GarageBand will import selections from your iTunes library as a “don’t mess with me” media file. You can’t change tempo or pitch on imported media files without a special little spell that you can cook up with your keyboard.

This is what the main window looks like when you’ve imported a track:

Notice the track preview is a orangey-yellowish color. Media tracks need to be changed to instrument tracks to respond to tempo or pitch changes made in the master track or editor window. Here’s where the keyboard shortcut comes in. Hit “ctrl-option-G” and then click on the orangey-yellowish track preview.

It now should look like this:

Be sure to double click on the preview (now blueish purple) to open the editor and tic the box marked “Follow Tempo and Pitch” like this:

There are several ways to slow the tempo down, but if you show the master track and adjust the tempo, you can speed through the song and slow through the guitar solos. Save the file and you can come back when your fingers stop bleeding.

Another way to do this is through Annotation Transcriber by zeitAnker. This program is designed specifically for adding subtitles to films, but it can slow down audio to 30% tempo without a change in pitch. Annotation Transciber even sounds a bit better than GarageBand in the quality department at slower speeds. The downloadable version of AT is a demo that fully functions for shorter media (it worked for me on media over ten minutes) and you can purchase a fully functioning program for ⚬29.

GarageBand has the ability to loop even the smallest selections for repetetive learning, and Annotation Transcriber can handle foot pedal operation so your hands can be ready to free small countries under communist control and save the ozone layer all through your Mexican made Stratocaster.

iTunes has playlists(iTunes link) available from each game for your downloading convenience. You’ll be able to learn the songs sweet enough to make the Guitar Hero Soundtrack. Instead of five button mastery, you’ll be able to plug your guitar into your Volkswagen just like Slash and grind your axe, burn your frets, and battle for your soul like he does every day of his life.

If you look closely there are really tons of features in this cat that got lost in the crowd. I’m talking about the little enhancements that aren’t flashy or revolutionary, but are useful, fine-tuned, or actually improve or enhance the user experience.

Right after the jump is a list of ten that you might not have come across yet.

1. iChat Recording. After getting your buddy’s permission, video and audio chats can be recorded and saved.
2. iChat Invisibility. This was the only thing keeping me using Adium. Go online and talk only to the people you want to. No more getting bombarded with chats from people you’d rather not waste your time with.
3. Preview PDF Manipulation. Now you can add or remove pages from a PDF document by simple drag and drop. Especially useful for merging several documents together.
4. QuickLook Multiple Files. Select a few files and hit the spacebar. Especially useful for videos and pictures. You can go through them like a slideshow, or click on the Light Table view to see them laid out in a grid.
5. Mosaic and Collage Screen Savers. Leopard has some great new screen savers. Core Animation has allowed them to do some crazy things with your photos. Mosaic shows you one photo, and then zooms slowly outwards from a grid of other photos that make a second photo, which in turn is part of a third one, and so on. If you don’t understand it take a look at this.
6. Drag and Drop Tabs in Safari. Not only can you rearrange tabs, but you can also drag them in and out of the window itself. Drag one away to make a new window, or into another window to add it.
7. Space Bumping. Drag a window all the way to the edge of a screen to “bump” it into the adjacent space.
8. Spotlight Calculator. Type anything from simple arithmetic to logarithms and it’ll give you the answer right below. It even knew that sin(pi)=0 and ln(log(1)) = -infinity. Also type a word in Spotlight and it’ll define it for you.
9. Autosave in TextEdit. Pick an interval to automatically save your work as you go. I can’t say I’ve ever wished I had this option as I don’t think TextEdit has ever crashed on me, but it’s certainly nice to have.
10. Scrolling in an unselected window. Position your cursor over any window, selected or not, and you can scroll through with your mouse’s wheel. This may sound trivial, but try it once and you’ll be using it constantly. I used it myself to type this article, scrolling through Apple’s page while typing in a separate window.

What Leopard gems have you found? What is the biggest change Leopard has made in the way you use your Mac?