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As Macworld is closed today and tomorrow in recognition of the Thanksgiving holiday in the USA, there won't be any new hints until Monday morning. If you're celebrating the holiday, have fun, be safe, and we'll be back as usual next week.
-rob.
Software
With Snow Leopard, some multifunction printers will only print, because the new drivers from Apple do not support any other functions. But you can still get some older models to work, provided they were released prior to the switch to Intel in 2006.
I managed to get my HP PSC 1110 printer to ...
Software
Apple
This may be old news, but I just found out about Flash Cookies (otherwise known as Local Shared Objects ), and a way to delete them, and to prevent more from being created.
You can control Flash cookies via Macromedia's Flash Player Settings Manager , which is an actual Flash application you ...
Software
Macromedia Flash
Macromedia
I wanted to find a way to use the Home and End keys to go to the beginning and end of a line, as I find that more convenient than using Command-Left Arrow and Command-Right Arrow. Here's how I solved it...
First, install Butler , then create two new "Keystroke" Smart Items -- click the Plus ...
Software
OS X
I have both Microsoft Office 2004 and 2008 installed on my machine for compatibility reasons. However, both versions of the application show as, for example, Microsoft Word in the menu bar when running. I wanted to change this, and found an easy way to do so. This only works for the Office 2008 ...
Software
Microsoft Word
Microsoft
Office 2008
Recently, any time I tried to run Safari on 10.6 caused all apps and the Finder to hang with the spinning beach ball.
Force-quitting Safari stopped the problem, but it would occur again on the next launch. Googling around, I saw many folks reporting similar problems, but no solutions.
The ...
Software
If you need to search for something you chatted about in Skype, but do not remember exactly who or where you chatted with, it's hard to do right now. But here's one way to do it with Spotlight.
The latest version of Skype for Mac has a history button for each contact -- click the Gear icon, ...
Software
Skype
Navigon not only produces navigation software for the iPhone; their (probably) much bigger business is selling GPS navigation units for cars. These units can currently only be updated from Windows operating systems. However, an out-of-the-box Parallels installation running Windows may not be ...
Software
I wrote some proof-of-concept code that allows you to use the Apple Magic Mouse to zoom in/out in the frontmost application with pinch gestures. I've detailed the process of how I got this working in this entry on my blog, including some compilable source code that implements pinch for zoom ...
Software
Apple
I use FileVault to encrypt the contents of my home folder. In the case of my laptop being stolen or lost, the new user should therefore be unable (or find it extremely hard at least) to access my work and personal confidential data.
FileVault is very powerful, but it has a downside: FileVault ...
Software
I was looking for a quick way to rotate only the even numbered pages in a document that I had scanned in using my Brother MFC's scan-to-email feature in duplex mode -- I found that it had flipped every second page, and they needed to be unflipped. It turns out there's a not-so-obvious way to do ...
Software
Sometimes the trash won't be emptied, or a volume refuses to eject with a "file in use error." There have been hints on how to find that out in Terminal with lsof , which is not necessarily for the faint of heart.
Here is a nice Automator workflow that runs some AppleScript and shell commands ...
Software
Like many people, I have customized many thing about my OS X setup, not the least of which were app and folder icons. Via programs like CandyBar or LiteIcon , or manually, any and all folder/file/app icons can be changed.
Personally, I like the pure|icns set from Interfacelift. However, there ...
Software
OS X
The Magic Mouse lets you navigate forward and backward between web pages in Safari or Firefox with a two-finger swipe.
The same two-finger swipe also moves you forward and back in iCal. It works just the same as clicking the forward and back arrows around the day/week/month view control at ...
Software
I know there are plenty of back up/synchronization packages for the Mac, and I know Time Machine is awesome. But as I have a Linux/FreeBSD background, I wanted to do it my way. And none of the software I tried was able to do it my way :-). So the command line seemed to be a good solution.
My ...
Software
Linux
If your bootloader gets changed or corrupted, this fix will restore it without damage to your disk partitions.
This hint may be a bit esoteric, but I thought I was up for a long night of reinstallation pain before stumbling upon this fix. I made the mistake of trying to use an Ubuntu 9.04 boot ...
Software
Ubuntu
OS X
Recently, I was asked to set up a web site for a church; since I didn't want to spend days doing it, I decided to try iWeb.
Things worked well until I updated to 10.6.2. Suddenly, iWeb was crashing on startup, without fail. Fortunately, someone on the Apple forums figured out a work-around.
...
Software
Apple
If you need to hold a print job for a period of time, but forget to change the settings in the Print dialog before sending the job to the printer, here's a solution.
When the printer's window comes up, click the Hold button, then double-click the value under "When. For the date, you'll need ...
Software
Wouldn't it be nice to activate Exposé's Show Desktop mode via an icon on the Dock? Here's how to make one that does just that. However, be warned: this works only one way -- it shows the Desktop, but on clicking again, it does not bring the windows back. To get out of Exposé's Show Desktop ...
Software
This hint is for Tiger only -- you'll have to modify it on Leopard or Snow Leopard, because of changes to iCal's folder structure.
I've recently switched to Mozilla Sunbird because it looks a lot nicer and runs faster than iCal, although it can't directly use iSync, so I can't synchronize the ...
