TekkieBob - All Things Tech!

Welcome to this 3rd installment of the Mac Productivity Series. Mail for Mac OS X Mail is a very robust e-mail client. Mail integrates with your Address Book, iChat, iCal, and even Finder smoothly and seamlessly. Some Major features: Smart Mailboxes - These dynamic folders can be configured just about anyway you like. For example, suppose you want to keep track of all email you get from Aunt Dora, but only what she has sent in the past 30 days that you have not yet responded to. Set up a smart mailbox like so: (Picture Smart Mailbox) Now all mail from dear ol' Auntie Dora that you have not had time to reply to is conveniently located in it's own mailbox. This will change automatically as the messages change. Any new messages your dear aunt in your inbox will also show up in this folder. If you reply, that message will no longer be there. If the message is more than 30 days ago, it will disappear from this folder. (The messages will still be in your inbox or where eve...

Address Book. Most Windows users are used to using something like Windows Address Book or Outlook to keep track of contacts. For Mac users, Address Book does this and a whole lot more! Who do you know? Address Book is designed to keep your contacts organized YOUR way. Your business contacts. Your family. Your friends. Keeping them together is a snap with Address Book for Mac. So many people today have several phone numbers, E-mail addresses and even physical addresses. (ie: Home, Work) Address Book allows you to record almost anything about people that you know. You can enter addresses, phone numbers, anniversary dates, E-mail addresses and even the dog's name if you want! Looking at the picture here, you can see that you can add anything you wish to remember about a contact. (All of this is searchable, by the way, in Address Book) You can also import contacts . Using the vCard format or even text formats you can import contacts. Simply click File>Import and you will ...

Alex has commented to the previous post that Spotlight is integrated with Calculator. Here is a screen shot showing how to use it: In this instance 58 x 8 = 464 (using the asterisk as the multiplier symbol) Great tip, Alex!

In this first installment of our 5 part series , we will be discussing Spotlight. Spotlight for Macintosh is designed to help you find ANYTHING in your Mac. Think of it as Google for your computer. How does it work? Spotlight searches your Mac in the background and continually updates an 'index' of any changes or new files it finds. This index can then be used to instantly, as you type, search your Mac for whatever your search terms are. For a technical discussion, please read Wikipedia's article . How can it help me? Spotlight is integrated into Mac OS X and can be used from your desktop, any finder window and using keyboard shortcuts. Look at the top right of your Menu Bar and you will see an icon that looks like a magnifying glass. Click on it and a small search field will come up. Type in any word or phrase. Your Mac will instantly display a list of files and folders sorted by type that match your criteria. Note the picture here. Here the term "Hello"...

Mac OS X Productivity Apple has packed so many features into OS X Leopard that, for many, learning each one and becoming proficient at its use seems an impossible task! Over the course of the next few days, I will present a series of "how-to" posts featuring five Mac OS X Applications that really aid in productivity. They are: Spotlight - if it's in your Mac, you'll find it here! Address Book - People, people, people! Mail - From keeping in touch to keeping it together! iCal - Where am I supposed to be today? Quicklook - See what is in that file now! What you'll learn Each article will feature real-life usage and ideas that are practical. You will learn through screenshots, text and video tutorials how each of these applications can help you organize your work and your life. Of course, we'll try to have fun at the same time! After all, that's why you bought your Mac, right? Stay tuned...

Oh, boy! Camino did NOT do well on Acid3! Here is the version installed on my Mac: 53/100 is the worst score yet in my testing. OK, enough of the Acid3 testing. What is the point? Many web site designers are adopting JavaScript, CSS and other so-called Web 2.0 standards in development of websites. The Acid3 test shows how well a browser performs with these standards. Wikipedia has an excellent article explaining this test as well as test results using various web browsers.

Here is the Opera test.  Performed the best so far.  Interesting.  Any thoughts anyone?

I did an Acid3 test with a few browsers and these are the results I got.  For those unfamiliar, as I understand it, Acid3 is a test to see how compliant a browser is with current standards with the W3C . Browser # 1: Chrome by Google.  Running under Windows Vista Home on my Mac in VMWare. 79/100 Not bad for a new browser.  I'll be curious to see what the Mac version will do when it comes out. Browser #2: Firefox v.3.0.1 Mac OS X 10.5.4 71/100 Not as good as Chrome, but I have a PILE of extensions on Firefox. Browser #3: Safari 3.1.2 Mac OS X 10.5.4 75/100 Better than Firefox but still lower than Chrome. My take is overall they seem to perform about the same but I'll stick with Safari for now.  I use Firefox for much of my web browsing, but Safari is fast becoming a close second. Someday, maybe I'll test Opera too. Cheers!

Oh, boy.  Was my wife frustrated.  She wanted to simply print a sheet of address labels with her Mac.  No templates anywhere it seemed. So I went on a quest. Here is what she wanted to do: Simply print an entire sheet of labels using the same address. Should be a piece of cake, right? WRONG!  Address book does have many templates for printing labels, true, but only one at a time. A good label printing template should do the following: (IMHO) Print any number of different address labels any number of copies. Have the ability to "skip" over used labels so the labels left from previous jobs are not wasted. Be relatively easy to use. In my search for an answer, I came across this blog entry on Tech-Recipes.com that seemed to be the answer. But on further investigation it was a dead end. Why, then, does Address Book leave this feature out.  Ask Mr. Jobs I guess.  There is nothing at all on the Apple forums about the subject that I could find.  Although many were asking! So, what ...

Well, I downloaded Google Chrome, the new browser from Google.  Currently it is only available for M$ Windows XP/Vista, but they are planning Mac and Linux versions soon. Seems to be an OK browser for the 5 minutes I spent with it.  I installed it in Windows Vista running under VMWare on my Mac. Observations: Small download - less than a Megabyte Straightforward GUI - very simple layout Seemed to render pages fairly quickly Pages seemed to render OK.  I did not run the Acid 3 test yet. More when I get a chance to play with it.  I'll also try to post a screencast when I do. Cheers!

Helpful Hints By Giddles!: Hair that shines From my wife's blog...

WOW! That's all I can say for ScreenFlow. Although the product is $99.00 every penny spent is worth it. Everyone who uses a Mac and likes to help other Mac users should investigate the possibility of using this program. One can download a trial version in order to try it out. What does it do? Well, for starters, simply recording EVERYTHING on your screen to show your Mom how to add a new email address to Address Book, or even simply record yourself with your Eyesight camera telling how to use iCal to organize your life. Here are some features I found useful: Screen recording. Video recording. Audio recording. One can record any of the above simultaneously or individually and then combine the result.  The possibilities are endless.  For example, I have many Deaf friends and have found that most video tutorials contain audio commentary.  What I have been able to do with ScreenFlow is record the screen actions and then overlay myself signing the instructions using ASL (American ...