Here’s something that’s bound to be popular. The University of Washington is offering a Certificate program in iPhone Development, the coursework covers Cocoa too but there’s plenty of Cocoa development programs out there so it’s really the iPhone development that makes it stand out. For now the program is only offered at the University of Washington Seattle campus, but ArsTechnica reports that an online offering will be available next year.

Here’s the program description, directly from UW:

Learn the language, framework, processes, and skills to develop quality applications for Apple’s iPhone. Become familiar with Objective-C and begin developing applications in the Cocoa framework, using the iPhone SDK (Software Development Kit). Gain the tools to design, build, and test your applications, and to effectively market them through the App Store. Expand your knowledge to include more advanced Cocoa programming skills.

University of Washington: Certificate in iPhone Development

If you are interested in iPhone Development and aren’t interested in paying for a certificate program, a great place to start is Apple.com’s very own iPhone Developer site, iPhone Dev Center and by picking up a good book, we recommend Beginning iPhone 3 Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK available from Amazon.com

I’ve been on a bit of a retro and minimalism kick lately, preferring simplified apps that take me back to the good old days of BBS’s and 2400bps modems (ok maybe not the modems), and when I saw that GLTerminal has a new release I was pleased. It’s basically just a Terminal replacement that uses GL to create the appearance of an oldschool terminal, complete with monitor curvature and all. Everything else works as it should, so if you’re looking for a fullscreen old school alternative for Termianl, or just want something fun to work in for a while, try out GLTerminal.

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Still not convinced? Check out this screenshot below, it will make your Mac look like it’s in 1986!

Note: a reader pointed out that if you disable the display curvature, you can use this app to have a high resolution full screen Terminal to work in, something that the default OS X Terminal app does not provide.

If you’re a Comcast customer and you’ve entered in an incorrect URL or had a server time out recently, you’ve probably been extremely annoyed when you discovered you were being redirected to a page filled with Comcast ads. Comically, this obnoxious DNS redirect is named the ‘Comcast Domain Helper service’, and was forced on you whether you wanted it or not.

Remove Comcast DNS redirect

Things you’ll need to stop Comcast from redirecting your improper URL’s:

1) Your main Comcast account User ID / email address

2) Your cable modems MAC address

3) Visit the Comcast “Domain Helper” opt-out URL

In typical Comcast style, they altered your service without your consent, and you have to actually opt-out of the DNS hijacking service, thankfully you can do it online. Good grief.

A friend of mine asked me how to setup the Mac OS X Mail.app to use Gmail and just when I was about to write up a detailed how-to for her, I came across an excellent guide on one of OS X Daily’s very own readers sites. Rather than reinvent the wheel, check out Khürt Williams excellent walk-through, complete with screenshots:

IslandInTheNet.com – How to setup Mail app to use Gmail

Thanks Khürt!

The iPhone, iPhone accessories, and iPhone ringtones are all the rage right now, so why not make your own iPhone ringtone? With a Mac or Windows PC it’s pretty straightforward using iTunes, follow these 10 steps and you can easily create your own iPhone Ringtone from whatever song you want. Note that songs with DRM will not usually work, meaning things purchased from the iTunes Music Store will probably not be able to turn into ringtones if they have DRM protection.

10 Easy Steps to Make your own Custom iPhone Ringtone for Free

1: Launch iTunes

2: Find the song that you want to use for your iPhone ringtone, make note of the start and stop times of what you want to be the actual ringtone (the chorus, or whatever).

3: Control-click (Mac) or Right-click (Windows) the song you chose and select ‘Get Info’

4: Click the ‘Options’ tab and set the start and stop time of your ringtone in the settings below. Keep the selection at 30 seconds or less. Click ‘OK’ – Note: I suggest making a backup copy of the song so you don’t accidentally shorten the song itself.

5: Control-click (Mac) or Right-click (Windows) the song again and select ‘Convert Selection to AAC’ and iTunes will convert the song as another copy in the AAC format.

6: Now Control-Click or Right-click the ringtone and select ‘Delete’ making sure to click on the “Keep Files” button

7: Locate the file you just created. Typically located in your home directory under Music > iTunes > iTunes Music and then under the band’s name, the file you’re looking for will have an m4a extension

8: Now replace the ‘m4a’ extension of the ringtone file with “m4r” , so if the file is named MrRoboto.m4a the new file will be called MrRoboto.m4r – you’ll get a warning about changing the file extension time but click “OK”

9: Double click to open the ringtone file you just renamed. iTunes will automatically add this new ringtone to the Ringtones folder within the application

10: Finally, connect your iPhone and sync your new ringtone! You can then select it as any other iPhone ringtone via your iPhone settings.

This method will work in iTunes under Windows or Mac OS X!

Update: If you have upgraded to iTunes 9.1 or later and you are having problems, you will need to make some changes to the preferences in order to convert songs to m4a ringtone format in iTunes 9.1. Other than the import settings adjustment to iTunes Preferences, the process is practically identical. You will still need to create an .m4a file then rename the extension to .m4r for iTunes to recognize it as a ringtone.

This is a particularly handy trick for when you have limited screen real estate and want to fit more of a windows display on screen. A perfect example of this are the Hackintosh owners out there that are working with small netbook screen resolutions and some windows just don’t display properly, or won’t even fit on the screen. Instead of changing the actual screen resolution and losing screen real estate, you can scale all windows within OS X up or down by using the Terminal:

defaults write -g AppleDisplayScaleFactor 0.8

This will render all displayed elements at 80% of their original size

killall Finder

To set back to the default simply change the Scale Factor to 1.0 like so:

defaults write -g AppleDisplayScaleFactor 1.0

If you want to make things larger and easier to see, scale up to 1.2 or more, just play around until you find what works best for you. Remember to kill the Finder after each change in order to make changes take place.

Note: Virtually scaling up and down GUI elements can lead to some quirky appearance issues with certain apps, so test scale factors to find what works best for you and your apps.

We don’t want it to happen, but there comes a day in all Mac owners lives that their warranty expires, and that date is related to your original date of purchase, give or take the time for any additional AppleCare warranty service you have purchased in addition. So how do you check your Macs warranty information online? Follow these steps:

1) Open “System Profiler” and towards the bottom of the first ‘hardware’ screen is your systems Serial Number

2) Copy the Serial Number and visit the Apple Warranty Service site: https://selfsolve.apple.com/GetWarranty.do

3) Enter the serial number and your country, and search. Your Apple Warranty Information will be returned to you!

Paintbrush is a Microsoft Paint clone of sorts for Mac OS X, it’s an absolute joy to use in it’s simplicity and we are pleased that a new version is available with even more MS Paint type functions for your Mac. We’ve covered this MS Paint clone for Mac here before on OSXDaily but a new release is out with more features and bug fixes, and it’s even better than before. If you’re missing Microsoft Paint for your Mac then Paintbrush will scratch your itch just fine! Check out the screenshot to see just how MSPaint like this app really is, and be sure to download it now!

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If you’ve ever needed to troubleshoot a network or internet connection, you know how frustrating it can be (particularly when you’re on techsupport with various broadband providers). This quick tip can make the job a little easier on yourself. Open the command line and using the ipconfig utility, you can quickly access all of your DHCP info.

The command usage for a Mac using WiFi is usually as follows:
ipconfig getpacket en1

The command for a wired network using ethernet is usually:
ipconfig getpacket en0

You’ll be presented with a bunch of information, but the most useful of which is usually the DHCP data at the end as seen in the screenshot. I hope this helps you as much as it helped me!

I like Safari but find myself in Firefox nearly always because of a multitude of reasons. One thing I’ve long missed though is the ability to view PDF’s within the browser within Firefox, which Safari does wonderfully. If you’re tired of Firefox launching the Preview app (or even worse if you’re settings are different: Acrobat), then try this great little Firefox extension, which will pop open the PDF file into a new browser tab. Note this requires Firefox 3

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