PC Tips Box » Mac

How to make sure you will always have a responsive Mac

Jason — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 15:38:22 +0000

Whether you are talking about your car, phone, dog, your favorite football player or even about trying to make the best out of your work day, speed is one of the things – if not the most important – that always come up. The same theory applies to your Mac and the way you want it to respond to your commands.

There are countless pieces of advice you can find on the Internet telling you what you can do to make sure that your Mac is as responsive as you want it to be. However, although some of those tips will show you the right path to achieve that, others have nothing to do with improving the speed of your Mac’s OS X system.

What you can do to make sure you are not doing daily maintenance work on your Mac with no effect just because someone told you that, let’s say, is to repair the disk permissions. Actually, when repairing the disk permissions, OS X will just examine files and folders on your hard drive to check if their current permissions are set the way they were supposed to be.

If the permissions are different from the expected ones, they will be changed to their correct settings. That is only one of the many suggested practices users will wrongfully perform on a daily basis when noticing that their Mac is getting a little sluggish and unresponsive.

In fact, there are ways – correct ones – to make sure that your Mac keeps staying as responsive as the day you had OS X installed. The practices you will see listed bellow will ensure your Mac always performs at 100% of its capabilities and will allow you to enjoy the OS X experience in full throttle.

Back up your data when you are not using your Mac

Getting used to backing up your data when you are away from your Mac will allow you to use it without having to wait for your apps to open or to perform the way they are supposed to. Thus, you have to make sure that you will always schedule backup sessions for when you are sure that you will not be working on your Mac.

Clear out any unused system preference panes

This is a tip that made a couple of people I know cheer up when opening the activity monitor and seeing the CPU usage dropping from 30 something percent to a mere 10 percent in an instant. Why does that happen? Because many system preference panes will run processes in the background that will automatically start once you login on your Mac.

The most important fact is that you will not be able to stop those processes from starting up using the Login Items features.

If you will decide that you no longer need one of the preference panes, you can easily uninstall it by right-clicking on it and using the contextual menu that will appear. Should you not be able to remove them this way, you can always open a Finder window and delete them from the ~ / Library / PreferencePanes folder (where ~ is your home folder).

After deleting them, you may want to reboot your Mac to make sure that the preference pane and its associated process are completely removed.

Use as little login items as possible

It is always a very good idea to keep the login item list as light as possible by removing any applications that you can open later. Why? Because having many programs starting up at login time is a sure way to run a lot of them in the background without ever needing them.

Having a light login item list will also mean that you will be able to start working on your Mac a lot faster than if you would have to wait for all startup programs to load. Go to System Preferences / Accounts / Login Items to be able to add or remove programs from your Mac’s startup list.

Make sure Spotlight is disabled for external hard drives

If you are not a big fan of searching for files on external drives, disabling the indexing for such drives in Spotlight’s options will guard you from experiencing all kinds of slow-downs when connecting them to your Mac. After all, you should be the one using the drive at its full capacity and speed and not Spotlight.

Going to System Preferences / Spotlight / Privacy and adding a mounted external drive to that list will take care of that matter. If you also hate Spotlight snooping around on your hard drive and building indexes while you are trying to do your work, you can also add your Mac’s internal drives to the list (that also means that you can say good bye to speedy searching your Mac using Spotlight’s simple interface).

Always update your system

Although this does not seem to bring any immediate advantages to your Mac experience, you should make sure that you always keep your Mac up-to-date. You should follow this advice, because many of the system and application updates Apple will seed come with a combo of bug fixes and speed increases.

I was not sure if I should add this to the list due to it being a common-sense measure each user should take, but, finding out that many users preferred to skip it because they felt it was too time-consuming and considered it annoying when asking for reboots, I decided to go for it and add it to the rundown.

Reboot your Mac from time to time

This will take care of all those applications that have memory-leak problems (some apps will eat up hundreds of MB of RAM if left running continuously for long times).

Always keep your desktop clean

This is something that will help only the users of pre-Leopard Macs because in OS X Leopard Apple changed the way dock icons are managed. Thus, if you are a Leopard user you can skip this one.

Keeping your desktop as icon-free as possible is a good way to save RAM, because of the way Apple decided to deal with desktop icons. Each of the icons on your desktop is a fully fledged window that will use your Mac’s RAM memory.

Thus, if you are the kind of person that just downloads everything on their Mac’s desktop and never cleans it up, you will notice a sensible boost in your Mac’s performance once you will move all 700 and something images and documents from your desktop to a folder of your choice.

Those are all the things you need to know if you want to keep your Mac responsive and as fast as possible. Do you know of other Mac speed-up tips not covered in this article? If the case, share your knowledge with us and the other readers in the comments.

Tags: apple, apps, boots, bug fixes, experience, full throttle, leopard, Mac, Performance, problems, reboot, speed, start, startup programs, system preference, tips, X Leopard, x system

Finding an App’s Original Icon Set in Mac OS X

Jason — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 14:47:47 +0000

Say you’re doing a project for school, a presentation, or you simply need to get a hold of an application’s original (512 x 512) icon. Searching Google Images may do the trick, but you’ll often find yourself with pictures that are too small, blurry, modified or just not the one you’re looking for. This short guide will show you how to get your hands on an application’s original icon, right from within itself.

Power users should know that most Mac OS X apps (be they Apple-developed, or created by third-party devs) contain something called a “Resources” folder. This folder is mostly used by the application itself to get the images and sounds it needs to display / play throughout the course of running. Yes, you’ve guessed right: this is the place you need to be to start looking for that app’s icon set. We’ll use Apple’s GarageBand as the example for this short tutorial.

1. The first thing you need to do is navigate to where GarageBand is installed on your computer. If you have it already living peacefully in your Dock, just right-click its icon and select “Show in Finder.” Whether or not you’ve placed the music-making program in your Applications folder, you can simply fire up Spotlight (CMD + Space) and do a quick search to locate the app. Hold down the Command (CMD) key and hit Return (Enter) with the GarageBand selected in Spotlight. Congratulations! You’ve found where GarageBand is situated on your Mac’s hard drive.

2. With the application selected in Finder, right click its icon and select “Show Package Contents.”

3. Double click the “Contents” folder and then double click the “Resources” folder.

4. Locate the file called “GarageBand App.icns.”

NOTE: Most applications’ icons can be found using this method, as they’re generally named like this: “ApplicationName.icns.”

5. Copy the .icns icon set and paste it wherever you want it (Do not drag the .icns file out! It’s GarageBand’s to use).

6. Open the .icns file with Preview. It will show the same icon in five different sizes.

7. As shown in the screenshot above, drag the first (512 x 512 resolution) .tiff image file out and use any image editing application to change its size, format, etc., and save it. If you only want to save the icon as JPEG, GIF, PNG etc., you can just select it in Preview and choose Save As from the app’s menu.

Tags: apple, application, Computer, google, guide, how to, images, install, Mac, Mac OS, Mac OS X, method, screenshot, tiff, tiff image, trick, Tutorial

20 Tips Shortcuts and timesavers for OS X

Jason — Sat, 02 May 2009 07:51:04 +0000

1. Select multiple files
Select multiple files and folders by holding down the Command or Shift key as you click with the mouse. This also lets you select non-continuous items, so you can skip those that you don’t need. You can then drag them all to another location as one, or duplicate or copy them all in one go.

2. Open multiple files
Open multiple files and folders as one by hitting Command + [O]. Folders will show their contents, and any files selected will open in their respective applications.

3. Transfer multiple files
If you need to email or transfer a group of files, say via iChat or FTP, multiple-select the items or group them into a folder. Then right-click on the folder or items and choose Create Archive or Compress (depending on your version of OS X). Finder will then create a zip file containing all the items. The overall file size will now be smaller, so sending the email will also be quicker.

4. Make apps appear instantly
If you have programs that you always want to run as soon as you log in – say, iChat, Mail or an RSS newsreader – go to System Preferences > Accounts > Login Items and add them to your login items. (Remember, however, that adding lots of login items will make starting up slower.)

5. Automate tasks
OS X has a dedicated application for speeding up repetitive tasks called Automator. It contains all sorts of building blocks for creating automated workflows, called actions, which can be saved as plug-ins or standalone applications. So, for example, you could create an action to import a folder of images into iPhoto and then sort and export them for the web, or copy music from a folder through iTunes to an iPod then eject it. The possibilities are endless and there are many excellent free actions available on the Apple website.

6. Open applications faster
Rather than navigating to the Applications folder, use the Spotlight search bar and type in the first few letters of the program’s name. It will appear almost at once, and you can click on its name to launch it.

7. Quick connection
To connect to a server, simply hit Command + [K] and you can enter the address of any external server. To see local servers in Leopard, look under the Shared tab in the sidebar of any server window.

8. Save time when deleting unwanted applications
Be sure that you delete an application plus all its support files cleanly, efficiently, and as quickly as possible with the very handy AppZapper.

9. Reduce Desktop clutter
We all tend to drop files and folders on the Desktop for convenience and this can quickly become cluttered, slowing down your work flow. If you go to View > Show View Options, you can alter the way Finder displays items. Controls include changing icon sizes, label positions and whether text information is displayed as part of a folder.

10. Shortcut keys
By going to System Preferences > Keyboard & Mouse > Keyboard, you can add your own unique key commands to open specific applications by pressing the Modifier Keys… radio button.

11. Send mutiples to Trash quickly
To send multiple items to Trash in one fell swoop, select the items and press Command + delete.

12. Duplicate items
For a quick way to duplicate multiple items, select items then click Option and drag the items.

13. Speedy save
To save your current document, press Command + [S].

14. Quick quit
To quit the current application, press Command + [Q].

15. Minimise your app
To minimise a currently open window to the Dock, press Command + [M].

16. Open Preferences quickly
To open Preferences, press Command + [,].

17. Hide all open apps
To hide all applications at once, press Command + Option and click on the desktop.

18. Switch between apps
To switch between open applications, press Command + [Tab].

19. Find location
To reveal a file’s location, press Command + click on a window’s name in the title bar.

20. Open Spotlight
To invoke the Spotlight search bar, press Crtl + [spacebar].

Tags: apple, apps, faster, itunes, keyboard, leopard, OS X, preference, Quickly, sidebar, speed, Speeding, tips, Web

20 Tips Optimise your system for OS X

Jason — Fri, 01 May 2009 14:51:13 +0000

1. Boost memory
The simplest way to a faster Mac is by installing extra RAM. Before you buy, check the maximum RAM capacity of your Mac. You can download a free program called MacTracker that will tell you the precise technical specifications of every Mac ever produced.

2. Install RAM in pairs
Many Macs will give you a speed boost if you install matching RAM modules in pairs. G5 and Mac Pro towers actually require the installation of pairs of modules, though most other Macs will allow the use of an odd number, with the proviso that you won’t get the fastest possible performance from them. Crucial’s website will tell you the specifics for your model.

3. Faster drive
Installing a faster hard drive as the boot drive on a tower Mac will yield performance gains, especially if you go up to a 10,000-speed drive. On a laptop, installing a 7,200rpm drive (to replace a 5,400 rpm model) will also make things faster, though older Mac portables don’t have user replaceable hard drives

4. Is faster memory worth it?
When buying RAM you’ll often have the option to buy faster memory, which of course comes at a higher price. Although it may technically be faster on paper, in reality you may not notice a huge speed bump in real world, everyday use. Spending the extra money on faster hard drives would be a better idea for most users.

5. Graphics cards
On towers like G4s and G5s you may see a benefit to installing a faster graphics card, though only really if you use graphics-heavy software like compositing or video, or if you play a lot of games.

6. Firewire not USB
Although theoretically faster, USB 2.0 isn’t favoured as much by professionals as FireWire due to the speed at which it requests data. So although a USB 2.0 drive will be cheaper, a FireWire one offers superior performance.

7. Know your hardware
To understand the areas in which your Mac could be expanded or powered up, you need to know what its current hardware configuration is like. Go to the Apple menu and choose About This Mac, which shows you simple CPU and RAM details. Then click on the More Info button to open System Profiler.

8. Tweak the CPU
Some G4- and G5-based Macs have a feature called “processor bus slewing”, whereby you can manually increase or reduce the power of the CPU. This is found in System Preferences > Energy Saver.

9. Working with media files
If you’re working with iMovie, GarageBand, iDVD, Final Cut, Logic or another program that uses large media files, storing and working with them off another drive will greatly reduce the strain on your boot drive as it tries to run the system and the main application.

10. Get a faster keyboard
Logitech’s Cordless Desktop S 530 Laser for Mac is a wireless keyboard and mouse designed specifically for the Mac. The keyboard has specialised buttons to quickly open iTunes, iPhoto, Safari, Mail and other applications, while the laser mouse has a tilt wheel plus a zoom control, so you can go side to side and zoom in and out of documents.

11. Recycle old Macs
Rather than throwing away an older Mac, use it to take the strain off your main Mac by using it as a server, internet and email machine, or even for hosting wireless, shared iTunes libraries.

12. Make fewer connections
Reducing the number of devices connected to your Mac over USB or FireWire will help it run a little faster. So if you’re not going to print anything, for example, disconnect the printer.

13. Stick with an older OS X?
If your Mac is elderly, it’s worth sticking with an older version of OS X as the upgrade may bring crippling load for the sake of some features you could live without.

14. Trim the fat
Fancy extras like using an animated screensaver as a desktop background are a huge drain, especially on the CPUs of older Macs. Similarly, having extra users logged in the background and even using Dock magnification can slow down struggling older machines. If you forego these luxuries, your old Mac screen may look a little dull but it will perform to its best abilities.

15. Install less
If you’re installing or reinstalling a system from an OS X DVD, choose Custom Install and then deselect the additional printers and languages, and also the X11. and Developer Tools options. If your Mac came preinstalled, have a look in Macintosh HD > Library > Printers and sort the list of folders by size to see if one is huge, filled with PPD files. The idea in including them is that OS X will be able to recognise many printers. In truth, you only need the one driver for the printer you are running. You can delete these and reinstall the driver from manufacturer’s website.

16. Fewer languages
A free program called Monolingual lets you strip out all unwanted languages from your system. It is also able to remove unwanted architectures from your system (although this is a dangerous thing to play around with unless you’re sure what you’re doing).

17. Delete apps
In terms of applications you can safely delete more or less anything, since the apps themselves don’t contribute to the running of the system, with a few minor exceptions like System Preferences. You should leave the Utilities folder alone as well, since it contains assistants and the AirPort Utility to help you.

18. Reduce slowdowns
Set your backup schedule for times you know you’ll be away from your Mac, so it doesn’t slow things down while you’re working.

19. Minimise on music
Deleting duplicate or unwanted tracks from iTunes is also a great space saver, while clearing out obsolete photos from iPhoto will help. The Find function in OS X can be helpful here, as it lets you search using multiple criteria. So, for example, you could search for all items over 50MB in size that were last opened over one year ago, or something similar

20. Save energy
Don’t leave programs open after you’ve finished using them as they will continue to consume system resources.

Tags: apple, boot drive, configuration, CPU, graphics cards, languages, Mac, OS X, Performance, performance gains, preference, recognise, speed, speed boost, speed bump, speed drive, theoretically, tweak, Web

How to Update iPod shuffle Using Windows XP

Jason — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 12:37:26 +0000

Addressing users of an iPod shuffle (1st and 2nd generation), or iPod shuffle (3rd generation), Apple has updated its Support section with new information on how to update your player’s software.

Apple outlines that it is very important to understand the difference between “update” and “restore.” Failing to do this may result in losing all your songs, or whatever data you have stored on your iPod shuffle. Update does not affect your settings or songs, but only installs the software that controls iPod shuffle.

However, the restore action erases the disk and restores iPod shuffle to its original factory condition. According to the iPod maker, you should use the computer where music is normally synced, if you only need to update iPod shuffle. “Updating on another computer will result in all songs being removed from the iPod shuffle,” the company warns. Additionally, users should make sure to back up the contents of their iPod shuffle. Everything can be synced back to the device, if the items are part of your iTunes Library.

Finally, these are the steps you need to follow to update iPod shuffle for Windows using Windows XP, Windows 2000, and Mac OS X.

1- Download and install the latest version of iTunes.

2- Connect iPod shuffle to your computer via a USB port and open iTunes if it is not already open.

3- If iTunes detects that a newer version of iPod software is available, you will be prompted to download and install the new version (Internet access required). If the newest software has already been downloaded you may be promoted to install it. You can manually check for newer software by clicking the Check for Update button under the Settings tab for iPod shuffle (1st and 2nd generation) or the Summary tab for iPod shuffle (3rd generation).
Note: You may be asked for an admin username and password for the computer.

4- A progress bar will appear on the computer screen indicating that the update process has started. iTunes will present a message instructing you to leave iPod shuffle connected to the computer to complete the restore process. Do not disconnect the iPod shuffle during this step.

5- When the update is complete, iPod shuffle will reappear under Devices in iTunes.

For more iPod shuffle Support, visit Apple here.

Tags: apple, apple support, ipod, iPod shuffle, itunes 2, Mac, Mac OS, Mac OS X, OS X, update, windows 2000, windows xp

Using only free OS X programs

Jason — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 11:33:04 +0000

By default, Mac OS X has an interface that will always offer its users very high degrees of usability and eye candy. Although it is already a standard that users of other OSes still dream of, Mac users will always try to give it a little more bang.

If you do not think that the OS X GUI is one of the best-looking OS interface designs out there, just think about the high number of Windows and/or Linux users that will do anything in their power to make their OS look and act as closely as OS X.

If you are a Mac user that is not completely satisfied with how their Mac’s interface looks like and you want to achieve the full OS customization nirvana, you should know that, although you can also do this by hand (this is possible because OS X has an incredible high degree of ease personalization, if you know how to do it), you will need a set of tools to help you in your enterprise.

The tools of this trade are mostly free, with a couple of them still trying to get sold to people that still don’t trust free software or have not yet found the best free alternative. Such solutions will allow you to change almost anything you have ever dreamed of changing in OS X, and more.

They will make it possible for you to quickly and easily modify the way your system looks and behaves right to the bone. You will be able to change three main system areas: its overall theme, the way the OS X dock looks and behaves, and activate hidden system and application settings.

These three main customization areas are all covered by free and very easy to use applications. All you will have to do before beginning to customize your OS X system is to download them and drag them to your Mac’s Applications folder. After that, it will only be a matter of pointing your mouse and clicking on the features that you want to be enabled, disabled and/or modified.

1. Magnifique

The first application we are going to talk about is Magnifique. I don’t know how many of you know of it. The fact is that if you have ever used Shapeshifter or even heard of it and how it has been able to completely change the way Mac OS X Tiger looks, then you will surely understand what Magnifique is capable of.

Magnifique is Shapeshifter’s equivalent for OS X Leopard, and it will allow you to quickly change your system’s theme using a number of freely available ones on the developer’s website.

The application comes with an integrated download system for themes, but, if you are the type of user that also wants to know what other people that have used them think about them, you can also give them a quick look and choose one that matches your UI customization wishes if you go here.

Should you have installed a theme and you have gotten bored of it and want to uninstall it, you just have to click a single button. And, as the developer says on its website, “In case that fails, we have many other alternate solutions available on the forum, and even a built in command line restore script that will allow you to restore your system back to original in the case that you cannot boot. You have our help every step of the way.”

2. SuperDocker

This second application is the one you need to have in your toolset when you want to customize your Mac’s dock to the last bit. Thus, apart from allowing one to change it from 3D to 2D and back, customize the icons’ transparency, add separators and customize indicators, SuperDocker will also make it possible for its users to apply custom and free themes that can be downloaded from here.

Additionally, SuperDocker will permit you to customize your system even more by giving you quick and easy access to hidden behavior and graphic settings for Stacks, Dashboard, the Safari web browser, the system, and even applications like the Time Machine, iTunes and iChat.

To be fair, SuperDocker would be the dream come true of any Windows and/or Linux customization fan out there. But, unfortunately for them and fortunately for us, Mac users are the ones that have it at their disposal to make the best out of their OS X-powered machines.

As the developer adds on its website, “Did you know that you can put a Widget from Dashboard to your Desktop ? Did you know that you can activate the Data Detector Mode from iChat ? Did you know that it’s possible to change the backup time interval from Time Machine ?”

3. TinkerTool

TinkerTool should be (and probably is) the Swiss army knife of every OS X customization fan. This is the application you need if you want to change virtually any of the hidden settings that Apple did not want you to know about.

TinkerTool will help you customize the way almost all system applications and components behave and will do it without you needing access to administrative privileges.

As it is mentioned on its TinkerTool’s homepage, “The program will never change any component of the operating system, so the integrity of your system is not put at risk, and there will be no negative effect on system updates. All preference settings changed by TinkerTool can be reset to Apple’s defaults, or to the state that existed before using the tool. No dangerous background processes are used for TinkerTool’s operation.”

These are the applications you will need to make your Mac OS X system look as closely to the OS of your dreams as possible. If you know of other apps that could complete this list, let all the other readers know about them in the comments.

Tags: apple, apps, customize, download, interface, itunes, leopard, Mac, Mac OS X, mac users, os interface, OS X, theme, themes, Web, X Leopard, x system

Ten Great Mac Multimedia Programs

Jason — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 22:19:49 +0000

Most of Connected Internet’s readers are PC users. PC users don’t have too much of a problem finding an application for a specific task. Usually a quick Google will turn up a solution to a pressing problem. The only drawback to Windows’ prevalence is that there is an exponentially greater amount of commercial software, so PC users may have to dig a little to find a freeware solution to the task at hand.

Mac users enjoy a healthy commercial software community, but also free software is quite prevalent. Maybe it’s the unix influence, you know, free software and all that. I’m not complaining. As a Mac user I have a choice between a commercial solution, scouring the vast freeware available, or falling back to a unix solution when all else fails.

Following are ten applications for working with video, graphics and audio files that I have found to be indispensable. I see enough posts of the variety “What Mac app should I use for…” on various Mac web forums that I hope someone will find these recommendations useful.

1. VLC Media Player I don’t care if you’re a Mac user, a Windows user, or a unix adherent. This app should be on everyone’s hard drive. VLC is available for Mac, Windows, Linux, BeOS and Syllable, and the source code will compile on *BSD, QNX and Solaris. Forget about Windows Media Player, Quicktime, or whatever application you are using to view video files, VLC does it all. I can’t think of a video or audio format that VLC doesn’t support, and it generally behaves nicer than the common solutions during use.

2. ffmpegx An encoding utility that is pretty all-encompassing, like a VLC Media Player for the back end. Download a pesky .mkv or .mp4 movie that your Pioneer divx enabled DVD player in the living room won’t play? ffmpegx is just the thing to convert it to a format that will fit the bill. Need something to convert movies for your iPod? Look no further. I can’t tell you how often I use this app. $15 is a suggested donation, and I’m guessing that before long using ffmpegx you will feel compelled to pay for it. It’s that good.

3. Explicit Got a big avi you need to chop in two to fit on two cds? Look no further. No other bells and whistles, just a simple tool for splitting avi files, but you’ll be glad you have it when want to split or edit an avi.

4. Max Max will extract audio in pretty much any format you want and convert from just about any audio codec to another. Especially useful for converting ogg and flac files to mp3 so that iTunes and your iPod can make use of them.

5. Mac the Ripper is a useful DVD ripping utility. In addition to making legal backups of your DVD library, Mac will remove regional information, allowing users of unmodified DVD players to watch import DVDs on the player. Useful for that import concert DVD they didn’t release in your region, among other things.

6. DVD Imager A simple tool that will convert video_ts directories into burnable disc images. Not necessary that often, but extremely useful when you are looking at a directory you otherwise wouldn’t be able to do anything with. By the way, VLC will play those directories if that is all you are after.

7. Toast 10 Titanium I won’t blame you for saying that $99 is way too much for a cd/dvd burning suite when there is a perfectly fine disk utility built into the os. If you can afford Toast, you’ll never need another disc burning solution. Better than anything on Windows by a factor of 20,000.

8. DVDRemaster Got a dual layer dvd image you need to shrink because, like me, you only have a single layer DVD burner? Look no further. DVDRemaster will shrink those fat 7 gig images down to a svelte 4.2 gigs for us dual layer impaired types. Single layer lamers unite!

9. Toyviewer A simple image viewer and converter, but it does it all. Photoshop is great, but it takes as long to start up as it takes my operating system to boot. Sometimes you just need to turn a png into a jpg. Why wait for Photoshop for four seconds worth of work? Besides, Toyviewer creates smaller files without having to dink around with Photoshop’s myriad settings. I’ve been using Toyviewer since the NeXT days, and it’s still my favorite lightweight image manipulator.

10. Submerge Got a foreign film avi with a subtitle file? That’s great if you’re watching it on the computer, but it doesn’t do you any good if you were planning on burning that movie and watching it on your divx-capable DVD player in the living room. The answer? Submerge will create a quicktime movie complete with subs from your video file and accompanying subtitle file. All you need to do is convert it back to divx or xvid with ffmegx. A lot of work? Yeah, but if you just have to see that foreign film with subs it beats nothing at all.

Tags: application, avi, Code, codec, convert, converter, divx, download, dvds, ipod, itunes, Mac, mac user, mac web, Media Player, mp3, mp4, pc, quicktime, video, vlc media player, xvid

The best way to merge your contacts with iPhone

Jason — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 14:07:26 +0000

Many people find that synching a new iPhone with their contact and calendar data from applications like Microsoft Outlook just doesn’t work easily.

Fortunately, there are techniques you can use to make sure that your devices are sharing data smoothly.

If you’re having trouble using iTunes to sync your contact data from Outlook or other sources with your iPhone or iPod Touch, follow these steps to get your data where it needs to be.

Step 1. With your phone connected to your computer, make sure iTunes is running. If necessary, select your phone under the Devices category in iTunes’ left pane.

Step 2. With iTunes’ Summary tab in front, make sure the Options at the bottom are set the way you want them. I like to control which files are moved and when, so I uncheck Automatically sync when this iPhone is connected. I also select Manually manage music and videos.

Step 3. Click the Info tab. Select the box at the top of the Contacts section if you want iTunes to sync that information with your phone. Select other settings in that section to control how the data is organized.

Step 4. Repeat the above step for the Calendar and other sections as desired. Click Apply.

That should initiate the synching process. If it doesn’t, wait until the Sync button appears and click it.

No go? Try the official iPhone troubleshooter

If you run into problems while synching your phone via iTunes, Apple offers several strategies that may solve your problem. Here’s a quick rundown of workarounds to try:

Make sure you have the latest version of iTunes installed. To test for a newer version, pull down iTunes’ Help menu and select Check for Updates.
Reset the sync history. In iTunes, choose Edit, Preferences. Click the Devices tab and then select Reset Sync History.
Disable non-Apple add-ins in Outlook by unchecking the boxes for each one in the COM Add-Ins dialog box. The steps to opening this dialog vary between Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007; consult the programs’ help files for instructions.
Use Vista’s User Account Control applet to create a new user. Then log off your current account, log into the new account, and try the sync again.
Uninstall iTunes and then reinstall the program.

Detailed steps for each of these approaches can be found in support article HT1692.

If none of the above fixes things, your iPhone synching problems may be caused by corrupt entries. To test for this, browse through your Outlook contacts list looking for garbled names or other indications of faulty data. (Doing so also helps you eliminate duplicate entries, which are discussed in the next paragraph.) Delete any corrupt or superfluous entries and retry the sync.

One final snafu may remain. When merging address books, entries with minor differences are sometimes interpreted as separate entries, resulting in one or more duplicates. Fortunately, a number of products exist to ferret out and deal with such dupes.

A free program I like is Contacts Scrubber for Outlook from TeamScope Software. It searches your contacts and presents dupes to you one at a time, making an educated guess as to which fields to merge. You can specify which entry is the one to preserve and click inside individual fields to select details to merge, overwrite, or discard.

The free version of Contacts Scrubber can process up to 1,000 items, but TeamScope sells for U.S. $30 a version that goes beyond that limit and includes more advanced features. Contacts Scrubber works with Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista and Outlook versions 2000 through 2007. You can get the free version from Downloads.com.

A phone without stored phone numbers is pretty much useless. Fortunately, the procedures outlined here will solve most iPhone sync problems. Still, you may need to use several techniques until you find the combination that works for you.

Tags: apple, Computer, iphone, ipod, itunes, Microsoft, microsoft outlook, Outlook, phone, TeamScope, Troubleshooter, Windows, windows vista

Boost Your iMac’s Speaker Volume Level

Jason — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 20:42:59 +0000

While Apple’s older iMacs (Late-2006) boast an impressive pair of stereo speakers (considering the all-in-one design and their small size), the same thing cannot be said about the company’s 20-inch and 24-inch aluminum iMac (Mid-2007).

However, both Apple’s Late-2006 and Mid-2007 computers have their speakers placed at the bottom of the system, facing down. This leads to a considerable loss in sound quality, as the sound hits your desk and bounces off in all directions. Given this, some high pitched sounds (but not only) barely make it to your ears. There is a way to capture all the sound coming from your Mac’s speakers, and direct it all towards your ears.

Buy a pair of headphones! Just kidding. No headphones. You do, however, need two extra items on your desk to make this happen. A couple of ashtrays, for instance. Just place them underneath each of your iMac’s speakers. What happens is this:

Channeling the sound

The sound waves hit the two hollow-shaped objects, becoming trapped inside the round walls for a short period of time. In a fraction of a second, the now-channeled sound bounces back out, upwards, since there’s no other place to go. Simple, isn’t it?

Go ahead, give it a tray… er, try! You don’t necessarily have to use ashtrays. For once, they’re not that aesthetic; second, we don’t encourage smoking, and third, you can use some nicely designed pottery or something like that. You’ll have to see what suits your room best, so the objects don’t attract too much attention. After all, you don’t want folks thinking that your all-in one computer actually needs additional hardware to work well, now, do you?

Notes
- You will see (hear) a significant difference in sound quality only when the volume level is above medium. The effect still applies even on a low volume level, only it’s not so observable;

- For this to work, the sound first has to hit one of the inner-sides of the object, not the bottom directly. Check out more pictures below, to see exactly how you want to place your objects of choice.

Good luck and let us know how this trick worked for you.

Tags: aluminum, apple, boast, Computer, effect, Hardware, Mac, Speaker, Volume

Five iPhone tips

Jason — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 23:07:23 +0000

Some quick tips to get your iPhone skills slicker than the guy or girl next door. To rearrange the icons on the home page, tap and hold any icon until all the icons start to giggle. Now you can drag icons about, including on and off the Dock or between pages. Click the Home button to lock the icons again. The Dock is limited to four icons but, if you set the Home button’s double-click to call up your Contact favourites, you can remove the Phone icon from the Dock.

If you manage to crash your iPhone 3G playing with third-party apps, hold both the power and home buttons for 10 seconds to reboot the phone. Recalcitrant apps can be uninstalled using Installer.

Apple originally charged for custom ringtones but now you can create your own in GarageBand, while Windows users can follow the video tutorial at . SendSong supposedly lets you add any track in your iPod playlist to the custom ringtone list under Settings/Sounds/Ringtone, but we couldn’t get any love from it.

When using Safari, you need to rotate the phone *before* calling up the keyboard. Safari has a useful “.com” button, but you can add international domain extensions by enabling extra languages under General/Keyboards/International Keyboards. Back at the Safari keyboard, use the globe key to toggle through languages. Now when you press “.com”, drag your finger up to get extra options. Our iPhone 3G review unit from Optus surprisingly didn’t feature an Australian keyboard with .com.au, but for a first-gen iPhone there’s a hack for adding com.au at http://www.linka.co.nz/iphone_keyboard.php

Many of the GSM command codes also work on the iPhone. There’s a good list at but *3001#12345#* is handy for viewing network and cell information.

Tags: apple, command, extension, General, GSM, international domain extensions, iphone, ipod, ipod playlist, ringtones, safari, Tip

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