You can easily batch resize groups of images within Mac OS X by using the included Preview app, there is no need for any additional downloads or expensive photo editing applications, only Preview, which is free with your Mac! Here’s how to do it:

Batch resize images in Mac OS X

* Select all the images you want resized and open them within Preview
* From Preview, select the images that you want to batch resize from the drawer (Command+A will select them all)
* Now, go to the menu labeled Tools, and then Adjust Size
* Enter a value for what you want the new width and height to be
* Next, navigate to the File menu and click Save All
* All the images you selected are now resized!

This works in Preview that is included in 10.5 and 10.6, happy batch resizing!

It’s that time of year again, the holiday season is upon us! What better way to celebrate than to download a hoard of free Christmas songs from Apple, courtesy of iTunes?

From Barry Manilow to Amy Grant to Weezer to Aretha Franklin, this is quite a diverse set of holiday songs that are sure to get you in the spirit. Head on over to Apple, launch the link in iTunes, and enjoy your free music!

Apple iTunes: Holiday Sampler Album – 20 free songs

You can immediately access the present working directory in the Finder by typing the following command in the Terminal:

open .

If you have just launched Terminal, typing this in the command line will immediately open your home directory, but you can be anywhere and it works the same. You can also specify directories to open from the terminal into the Finder, like so:

open /Applications/Utilities/

This opens your utilities app folder. Try it with just about anything.

Note: Oops looks like David covered this a month ago: Open Current Folder in Finder from the Terminal, Thanks for pointing this out Carl!

You can reset a lost Administrator (the original account you created) password in Mac OS X by utilizing a Mac OS X installation DVD, here’s how:

* Insert the Mac OS X DVD into your Mac’s DVD drive
* Restart the Mac and hold down the ‘C’ key to boot from the DVD
* You’ll see a language selection screen, select your language (English) and continue
* Navigate to the ‘Utilities’ menu, select “Reset Password”
* Select the Mac OS X boot drive
* Select the original user account (not the root user!) and choose a new password
* Reboot as usual
* Your Mac administrator password is now reset!

If you do not have an installer CD or DVD handy, you can also reset a forgot Mac password using a crafty technique.

[ screenshot from Apple ]

Here’s a great tip from Apple regarding your iPhone… set a custom background image on your iPhone with a message like:

If found, please return to
Your Name
1234 Infinite Loop
Cupertino, California 95014
415-555-1212

it’s definitely relying on the goodwill of others, but if you ever lose your iPhone it just might work to get it back!

[ tip and iPhone image via Apple ]

You can insert the degree temperature symbol into any Mac OS X app by hitting the following key command:

Option+Shift+8 produced one like this: Temperature Symbol: 85°
Option+K types a symbol like this: Degree Symbol: 24˚

As you can see the symbols are slightly different but I couldn’t tell you why or what for, so just use which ever one you want. If it’s 35˚ outside, now you can tell someone!

This is simple stuff though right? Well, I just got an email from a relative who was clearly very frustrated that they couldn’t figure out how to type the degree temperature symbol in Mac OS X. I laughed about it for a second but then realized I’ve been asked this question a few times before especially from recent switchers, so clearly some of the simple things just need a simple explanation. Happy temperature telling!

Secrets is a pretty nifty system preference panel add-on that lets you access all sorts of hidden ‘secret’ preference options. Instead of typing a bunch of default write commands you can basically just click checkboxes or change dropdown options to easily enable some pretty cool stuff.

It’s pretty comprehensive, with a bunch of options for Safari, Dock, Finder, Xcode, and so much more. There’s really too much to list, so if you like tweaking with your Mac’s settings, install secrets to make your life easier.

Download now
Developer home

[ TUAW via Gizmodo ]

Knowing how to clear cookies is pretty important for any number of reasons, here’s how to do it on your Mac with the Safari web browser:

Clear Cookies in Safari

* From the Safari menu, drop down to ‘Preferences’
* Click the ‘Security’ tab at the top (the lock icon)
* Click the “Show Cookies” button
* From here you can search for site specific cookies if you only want to remove those, or remove all cookies
* Click ‘Done’

That’s all there is to it, now your cookies are cleared in Safari.

With the pbcopy and pbpaste commands, you can access your Mac OS X clipboard directly through the Terminal. Yes, that means you can access what you copied in a GUI app and use it in the command line seamlessly, and vice versa. Here’s an introduction on how to use both copy and paste from the command line:

pbcopy – as you might imagine, pbcopy is how you can copy things from the command line. The best way to use it is by piping something to it, for example:

ls -lha |pbcopy

This will pipe the results of ls -lha into your clipboard, which you can now access using the pbpaste command.

pbpaste – pbpaste is how you dump the contents of the clipboard. If you just want to see what’s in the clipboard, simply type pbpaste and you’ll see whatever is stored. If you used the above ls -lha|pbcopy command youll see the results of that now. You can also easily store the contents of the clipboard into a file by using pbpaste, as follows:

pbpaste > clipboard.txt

Now you’ll have the document clipboard.txt with the contents of your clipboard. You can double-check this by opening it in any text editor, or by typing cat clipboard.txt to see the contents.

pbcopy and pbpaste are a lot more powerful than the above examples though. Here’s how to use pbpaste to send the contents of your clipboard to another machine, by piping the output through an ssh connection into a file named myclipboard.txt on the remote machine:

pbpaste | ssh username@host 'cat > ~/myclipboard.txt'

Nice huh?

Google Chrome is out in beta for Mac OS X and although it’s relatively barebones, it seems pretty stable and certainly is fast. I still prefer Safari overall but I am glad Google Chrome is finally on the Mac platform in a usable release. Google also announced their public Chrome Extensions set today, which was previously closed off just to developers. The Gmail extension is a nice addition but I’m really hoping for something like Firebug for Chrome so that I can finally ditch my Firefox bloatware, and then I’ll be able to just run Safari and Chrome… one can dream!

Download Google Chrome
Google Chrome Extensions

If you’re having trouble installing Chrome Extensions on your Mac, check out this guide on TechCrunch for a workaround.