Leopard's Bluetooth feature is one of those things that's easy to forget about until you need it, then you're glad you have it. Let's take a look at some ways to get the most out of this under-utilized tool.
In order to use your Mac with another Bluetooth gadget like a mobile phone or headset, you'll need to pair it with that specific device. Locate the Bluetooth settings under System Preferences and turn the Bluetooth power on. Then also check the box marked "Discoverable." This will allow other devices in range to see your Mac.
Make sure the device you want to pair with the Mac is powered on and also discoverable (check the owner's manual for specifics on how to manage the Bluetooth settings on your mobile phone or headset). Next, click the Bluetooth icon found near your clock on the toolbar at the top of your screen and select "Set Up Bluetooth Device." Follow the Mac's onscreen steps that explain how to add the eight-digit passcode that will allow your two devices to talk to each other.
Once you've established a connection between your Mac and another gadget, your computer stores the info until you delete it -- there's no need to add a new passcode each time. When you're done using a Bluetooth device with your Mac, be sure to uncheck the "Discoverable" option to prevent anyone else from pairing a device with your computer. When you're ready to re-pair a device, just click on the Bluetooth icon, and select the gadget from the dropdown list.
One last thing: If you're not using Bluetooth on your laptop, make sure it's turned off to preserve battery life.
Whether you use Leopard's native screen grab tool, or a specially designed app like Skitch, there's more you can use it for than just snapping a shot of your desktop. Here are three of my favorites:
No more cut and paste - I often have to replicate several pages of a content management system (CMS) that require me to enter tags in a field one at a time. I used to enter them on the first page, then copy the text, open Text Edit or Stickies, paste the text, then move on to the next page and flip back and forth between screens while re-entering tags on each page. Now I just snap a screenshot of the tags I've entered and use it as a reference on the remaining CMS pages.
File those registration receipts - After I've bought an app, I snap a shot of the receipt screen and store it in Evernote. Of course I also keep the copy the vendor emails me, buts it's nice having a backup in case my email client flakes out.
Make audio editing easier - While editing podcasts in Audacity, I often need to note the exact time of a clip. While it's easy enough to make a note with pencil and paper (remember those?), a screen grab lets me see at a glance exactly what other settings I was using at the time.
What are some of your more unconventional uses for the screen grab tool?
I'll skip the obligatory mini-biography of Guy and cut to the chase: the dude gets a whopping 36 hours of standby time with his iPhone 3G. True, many other phones get better battery life and can go for days without a charge. But anyone banging their iPhone on the wall, wishing the darn thing didn't suck down the juice like a preschooler in the Sahara will appreciate his detailed account of the settings used to eke out lengthy iPhone standby time. Oh, and those other phones? As Guy says, "...it's better to have a cool phone that you have to charge everyday than a sucky phone that you can charge once a week." How do you keep your iPhone alive?
As the economy makes with the poop, we can all use a little bit of extra help finding work. Whether it's side projects, or full-time employment, there are plenty of jobs available for system administrators, programmers, and creative people -- all who use a Mac.
I've assembled a collection of sites and job boards that cater to those with a technical and creative skill set -- people who probably use a Mac. This is by no means a complete list, but should help anyone starting to look for work.
Comments consisting of "how could you dare possibly omit [insert name of board here]" will be met with resigned sighs from me, but cheers from our readers. So feel free to point people in the direction of boards that you've used or trusted before in comments.
When using iChat, do you sometimes feel like you're stuck back in 2005? Away from all the glory and marvels of today's modern social networking? Bring your iChat client into the golden age and sign up for iChat Buddy Updates at AOL's site so you can share your status messages as social-network updates.
Buddy updates transform iChat into a social network tool. You'll see a status feed from all your buddies including all the status changes you might have missed while you were out. You'll learn that your pal went to the gym 90 minutes ago and out to eat 75 minutes ago and into a meeting 4 minutes ago. (Great workout, huh?)
What's more, you can add your Twitter, Flickr and other site feeds into the mix so it's not just a steady stream of "away", "available", "away", "available" notations.
And of course, once you know you're building an audience with this new beta tool, you're sure to start using more interesting status messages than "Work only! Evil overlords on a case-by-case basis" all the time.
Buddy updates are a free service of AIM. Sign in with your iChat user name and ID at the buddy update site.
Ajaxian has posted a ridiculously simple way to enable web apps to mimic the iPhone's side-to-side flicking behavior using custom CSS supported by MobileSafari. If you're creating a web app specifically for iPhone and iPod touch users, you can get a similar feel to a native application with MobileSafari.
MobileSafari includes some CSS 3 support, including advanced DOM selectors and support for animations and transitions. Chances are, other browsers will have limited support for CSS 3 draft standards, and whatever you write probably will only work in MobileSafari and Safari 3 on the desktop.
The test application in this movie shows how it tracks finger movements across the screen, and performs actions based on the distance "swiped." Very nifty.
I should say, even before I start this post, that I've moved my iTunes library from one installation of iTunes to another, and what I did was just copy everything in the /Music/iTunes folder from one Mac to the other. But that's the transfer equivalent of parallel parking a semi and stopping when it "feels right" -- it worked for me, but I wouldn't recommend it for anyone else. I also have almost no iTunes purchased music in my library, and that's likely not the case for anyone else.
Fortunately, for people who don't enjoy playing Russian Roulette with their iTunes library transfers (and don't want to buy the software for it), here's a quick and easy guide to how to transfer everything over properly, and make sure that all the little hooks and crannies line up correctly in the new installation -- specifically, iTunes keeps an XML file that tracks where everything is, and you've got to change paths (using a quick find and replace) on all the tracks in your library. iTunes will then use that XML file to backup its own records, and then you're hunky dory.
What I can't find, according to this guide, is what damage I may have caused to my system by just hauling everything in and starting up iTunes -- I checked the Location key on both my new Mac and the old one, and the Locations are completely different, without me ever changing them. Either way, even though I throw around my libraries with abandon (look Ma, no backup!), you'd probably much rather be safe than sorry.
I've seen a lot of fun accelerometer uses in the App Store so far, but this is probably the coolest -- Dynolicious will actually use your iPhone's accelerometer to determine all kinds of stuff about how awesome your '92 Subaru is, from 0-60 and 1/4 mile time up to lateral Gs and horsepower. Just throw your iPhone somewhere secure in the car, hit go, and Dynolicious will track all that hardware stuff for you (even over multiple runs). Very awesome -- it's in the App Store right now for $12.99, which is pricey, until you see what an actual GTech meter will set you back.
What? Gas is super expensive right now, and you want it even cheaper? Wish granted: our friends at Autoblog have also dug up an app called g-tac, which will track your times and even graph them out for you. Unfortunately, g-tac won't do the cool accelerometer stuff, measuring out your lateral gs and horsepower for you, but you know the old saying: you can have things fast, good, or cheap, and you only get to pick two.
Just the other day I noticed an odd thing: the Spotlight magnifying glass on my MacBook Pro had that little pulsating dot in it that means it is indexing something. That was odd, since I hadn't added any large files to my Mac, nor had I connected an external harddrive. Or did I?
As you might be able to guess from the picture above, Spotlight was dutifully trying to index my Time Capsule's harddrive every time that drive was mounted by Time Machine (which is once an hour). This process was making my backups take a little longer than I wanted them to, so I simply excluded my Time Capsule from Spotlight's indexing.
Here's how you do it:
Launch System Preferences (or you can open the Spotlight preferences from the Spotlight dropdown menu).
Click on the 'Privacy' tab.
click the little plus icon ()
Choose your Time Machine disk (as you can see mine is cleverly named)
That's it! Now Spotlight will ignore your Time Machine disk, your backups will run a little faster, and there will be a spring in your step.
Update: As some commenters have noted, this tip does mean that you won't be able to use Spotlight to search your Time Machine backups. That's fine for me, since when I'm using Time Machine I'm restoring a file that I noticed is missing, or an entire folder. I don't need to search for something, however, if you find yourself routinely searching your Time Machine backups via Spotlight this tip isn't for you.
IntoMobile has a few good tips on how to extend your iPhone's battery life, and most of them involve the most obvious thing you can do to keep your iPhone running: cut down on any and all extra functions. They actually recommend to turn off 3G, but you don't have to go that far -- just by holding down the Home button, you can close any background applications sucking up juice. And by resetting your phone, you can do the same thing -- clear out anything running that you're not using.
Actually, while I was in Los Angeles last week, I heard the great Leo Laporte mention a great tip on his radio show: turn off the "Ask to join networks" feature in the WiFi settings. If you're like me, you almost always know when there's a WiFi network around that you can use on your iPhone, and so it's pointless (and a waste of battery life) for the iPhone to be constantly searching for one. You can always flip it back on if you do want to do a little poking around, but leaving it off will significantly help battery life.
In fact, when in extreme trouble, you can go even farther and just switch the whole thing into Airplane Mode. It'll make your phone useless, but when you really need it -- out on a trip, or waiting to make an important call -- the extra battery time might make all the difference.
The Dock's Stacks feature lets Leopard users view a folder's worth of stuff with one click. You'll either love it or hate it, use it or not. If you do use it, here's a little tip that improves it slightly (in my opinion).
When you've got a bunch of files from a Stack displayed in Grid View, it can be hard to spot the particular one you're looking for, especially if many of them look identical (such a collection of text files or word processor documents).
Luckily, there's a highlight you can switch on, that puts a whiter background around the file you're mousing over. It makes it slightly easier to ensure you click on the correct file.
The highlight appears normally if you use the arrow keys to move around a Grid, or if you type Command and the first letter of one of the files displayed. But this trick switches it on permanently, so that it is always in action whether or not you use these keyboard shortcuts.
There's a funny post at The Apple Blog today that points out a few typos that give Mac OS X Leopard's built-in spell checker a bit of trouble.
For instance, the error "instrucitons" suggests "isntrucitons" as well as "instructions", and "applicaticataion" when "applicatication" is typed instead of "application." There are a few more in their list.
I've noticed that my iPhone always suggests "he'll" when I want to type "hell" (yes, I type "hell" enough to have noticed this).
Of course, this is simple to fix. You can correct these errors for good by right-clicking (or Control-click) on the correct spelling and select "Learn spelling" from the contextual menu. Use this same method to add uncommon words, like surnames, etc.
An earlier post about PocketMac Ringtone Studio for iPhone reminded me of how I put together ringtones for my iPhone. I just fire up GarageBand and iTunes, do a little quick magic, and out come the ringtones I want.
This doesn't work with protected files such as those you've purchased from the iTunes Store -- hell, Apple wants you to spend $0.99 for the tune and another $0.99 to turn it into a ringtone. The method described here works very well turning those CD snippets that you've ripped into iTunes into ringtones. Follow along after the break for the step-by-step.
Mac OS X Leopard has a slew of controls meant to keep whipper-snappers at bay protect our kids (and data). They aren't the most powerful tools in the world (especially if Junior knows your administrator password), but they are helpful.
To make use of Parental Controls, you'll first have to create an account other than the administrator account. That's simple enough -- just go to the Accounts Preference Pane and click the "+" button. After naming the user and creating a password, select the user and click the "Parental Controls" button.
There are several options under the following tabs:
System
Content
Mail & iChat
Time Limits
Logs
Read on to find out how you can use each of these to customize your children's Mac OS X experience.
Earlier this week, we described several ways to create screenshots with your Mac. Using the keyboard shortcuts in the Finder is great, but you may have noticed that the results aren't very sharp. Ivan at creativebits noticed that, too, and figured out how you can correct the problem.
He explains that a basic screenshot creates a JPEG with a resolution of 60 by default. As is often the case, the solution is just a couple of Terminal commands away. Set the default format to png, pdf or tiff for much better results.
If you're not the Terminal type, check out Skitch, which takes simple, great-looking screen captures.
Leopard's Bluetooth feature is one of those things that's easy to forget about until you need it, then you're glad you have it. Let's take a look at some ways to get the most out of this under-utilized tool.
Whether you use 
I'll skip the obligatory 
As the economy makes with the poop, we can all use a little bit of extra help finding work. Whether it's side projects, or full-time employment, there are plenty of jobs available for system administrators, programmers, and creative people -- all who use a Mac.
I should say, even before I start this post, that I've moved my iTunes library from one installation of iTunes to another, and what I did was just copy everything in the /Music/iTunes folder from one Mac to the other. But that's the transfer equivalent of parallel parking a semi and stopping when it "feels right" -- it worked for me, but I wouldn't recommend it for anyone else. I also have almost no iTunes purchased music in my library, and that's likely not the case for anyone else.
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Mac OS X Leopard has a slew of controls meant to 
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