TekkieBob - All Things Tech!

Fed Up - Full Hard Drive Syndrome Getting the "Start-up disk is full" warning?  Here are some tips that can help you reclaim some drive space. Backup, Backup, Backup Backup (as in save important stuff just-in-case) before you do anything that will significantly impact your computer's internal storage.  If you have an external hard-drive with at least 2x the capacity of your internal drive, consider using Time Machine to create automatic backups of your data.  Time Machine, built into your Mac, will automatically check your computer every hour for changes and back them up incrementally.  This means it will only save changes, not re-copy all of you data over again.  You can use an external drive physically attached to your machine (USB, Firewire, Thunderbolt) or storage on your network, often referred to as Network Attached Storage or NAS.  One of the best and easiest solutions is to use an Apple Time Capsule.  It is easy to configure and you can "...

Duplicates!!! When you control+click (or right click if you have enabled that option) on Mountain Lion, and there seems to be several duplicate applications listed and/or apps you no longer use, here is a Terminal shell script that will fix that.  Just copy and paste the code below in a Terminal window. /System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/LaunchServices.framework/Versions/A/Support/lsregister -kill -r -domain local -domain user (Terminal can be found using Launchpad or Spotlight) After pasting, hit the Return key and allow time to run, then type "killAll Finder" without the quotes, and Return.  This will rebuild the "Open With..." menu.   If you do not see an immediate effect on the lists, restart your Mac.   Should be no need to restart. (Thanks, JK) Duplicates and old apps gone! If you wish, you can make a Service that will do it using Automator as well: Open Automator (Launch Pad or Applications folder) Create...

Mac OS X Tips : This guy is good. If you want to tweak your login screen, make Automator workflows, or simply just learn some power Mac user tips, this is the website to go to! For example: Create your own EPUB ebook files using Automato r 13 things you didn't know about Preview Check it out! 'via Blog this'

Just got a new iPad and wondering where to start?  Here's TekkieBob's quick list: Of course, much depends on personal usage, but many apps that are must-haves are free.  I'll do it by category: Productivity : Must haves: Evernote DropBox iWork Pages - for creating good docs that can be converted to Word and PDF Numbers - the best spreadsheet app. Ever. Keynote - blows away PowerPoint and works great with external displays GoodReader - PDF annotation and password protected ZipBrowser - to open and manage ziped files sent in emails Good to have: DukePen - note taking and handwriting Skitch Gmail app Box -  box.com BE Write HD - blog posting, etc. Photography/Video: (Remember, the iPad camera is not the greatest) Must haves: Photogene 2 Color Effects Snap Seed - Yep, is very good!  Saw that Starbucks is featuring it this week as a give-away.  Go. Get. It. Good to have: PS Express TimeLapse Shutterfly - unlimited photo s...

Wolfram|Alpha Becomes Scannable with QR Codes This is a great tip!!!! And free.

Back | Forward Buttons When using Finder to browse through your folders, sometimes you want to go back several folders to where you started.  Clicking the back button several times works but it is more efficient to press and hold the back button and a list of your history will show... Hold down the back button This will save you some time in your daily workflow.

Enable Outline Mode in OS X's TextEdit : "If you want to quickly jot down a few notes for later reference, opening up Microsoft Office is kind of a pain. It turns out there's a secret outlining mode built right into TextEdit on the Mac. You probably wouldn't want to use it for more serious work, but having an easy, automatic outlining mode can be pretty handy for adding structure to your notes. In TextEdit, just hit Option Tab to turn any rich text file into an outline. It works just like Microsoft Word's outlining mode (or other similar office apps)—just hit enter to create a new bullet point with the same indent, and hit tab to indent the current point."

Use mouseover highlights in Snow Leopard's Stacks | Mac OS X | Mac OS X Hints | Macworld : "To use mouseover highlights on an as-needed basis, you just need to change how you activate your Stacks. Instead of clicking on your Stack and then immediately moving the mouse into the Stack area, click-and-hold on the Stack icon until your Stack appears. Now when you move into the (grid or fan view) Stack, you’ll see a mouseover highlight effect (a blue background in fan view; a silver one in grid view)."

Posted in the Apple forums was a question from a user who owns one Mac but has a login for himself and another for his wife.  He wanted to know how to transfer some songs from one library to the other.  Sharing the library was not a viable option for them, so this is what was suggested: Go to your HD in finder. look for the Users folder. There you will find a folder called Shared. Make a new folder there called music or whatever you wish to call it. Now, navigate to your Music folder, open the iTunes folder and there you will see folders with your music, TV shows etc.. COPY the files you wish to the shared folder you made above. Now, log in to you wife's account and open iTunes. Select File>Add to library. Navigate to the shared folder you made (Typically Macintosh HD>Users>Shared>new folder iTunes will add the music! Then to save hard drive space, delete the contents of your shared folder. He reported that this worked just fine, and it may work for you t...

There may be times when you find a website while using Safari and would like to see it in Opera or Firefox. (Developers like to do this to see how pages render on different browsers.) A quick, simple, and easy way to do this is simply to drag the URL from the address bar to the browser on your dock and Viola! The webpage will open in the other browser.  This also works with bookmarks too.  Just open your bookmarks folder and drag the book mark to the other browser.

A cluttered desktop.  Thanks to the powerful way Mac OS X manages memory, it is easy to have several applications open at one time. Posting to your blog, listening to iTunes, burning a picture DVD, monitoring your feed reader, etc... Your desktop can become VERY cluttered indeed! How can you keep track of all those programs?  Well, aside from seeing them on you dock, Mac OS X Leopard has two features that allow you see each window open and select the one you wish.  You can even have several desktops further organizing your workflow. Exposé When you want to see hidden windows on your desktop, quick keystroke or even a mouse movement will separate them so you can see them all. As you can see above, three applications can be viewed at once.  Simply click on the one you wish to switch to!  (Of course you can Command-Tab to swich applications, but this allows you to select a different window.)   Spaces Even further in an effort to keep your work organ...

Here's a tip that can help you in many ways. Screenshots. This means that you can take 'pictures' of your computer screen or any part of it. Taking shots of your screen can be very useful. For example, suppose you are trying to help a friend with his Mac. You could take a picture and send it in an email to help him visualize how he can accomplish his task. How to do it. You could use Grab in the Utilities folder, or you could use keyboard shortcuts. Shortcuts are quick and easy. Say you want a shot of your entire screen, simply press (all together) Shift-Command(⌘)-3 and Leopard will make a picture file on your desktop that you can modify or send in an email. Like this: The screen shot will be a small file on your desktop like this: You can rename and move the file as you wish, of course too. Another shortcut is ⌘-Shift-4 which will allow you to take a picture of only a portion of your screen. (That is how I captured the picture of the file on the right.) ⌘-Shift-...