Snow Leopard changed the way the Dock behaves when a Dock item has been clicked on and held down, since 10.6 it launches Expose for that specific application. You may recall how Leopard handled the click-and-hold though, which was to launch the contextual menu (the same one you get when you right-click in 10.6). Using the Terminal and the defaults write command, you can alter this behavior between the 10.5 contextual-menu and 10.6 Expose style click-and-hold Dock behavior. So launch your Terminal:

Show contextual menu rather than Expose when Dock item has been clicked and held (like 10.5)
defaults write com.apple.dock show-expose-menus -bool no; killall Dock

Revert to Expose upon click-and-hold (10.6 default)
defaults write com.apple.dock show-expose-menus -bool yes; killall Dock

I actually like the new Expose click effect (which is slightly different in 10.6.2 than it is in 10.6), so for me this is a matter of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” but to each their own.

via Lap Cat Software

Converting a PNG file to JPG is really easy in Mac OS X, here are the steps:

* Launch the origin PNG file within Preview
* Navigate to the File menu and down to ‘Save As’
* Select “JPG” under the ‘Format’ drop down list
* Click “OK”

Your PNG file now has been converted and saved as a JPG file to the location you specified! If you want you can go back and delete the origin PNG file. Naturally you could reverse the process and save a JPG file as a PNG file to do the opposite conversion.

In the Spotlight menu, hold down the Command key with the up and down arrow to make the selection jump through the Spotlight search result categories.

I love my iPhone but it’s had it’s share of quirks, and one of them is the seemingly random ability to access the cellular data network. I don’t know if this is an AT&T problem or an iPhone problem, but it’s really annoying to not be able to use 3G service when I need to. I went looking for a solution for the problem and came across a pretty simple and straightforward fix on TUAW. They suggest resetting your iPhone Network Settings:

To reset your iPhone’s network settings, tap your way to Settings > General > Reset > Reset Network Settings.

The only downside to this solution is that it also resets your remembered WiFi access points and their passwords, so be ready to re-enter a bunch of WEP/WPA keys!

Anyway, this solution worked for me, so thank you TUAW! And if you’re having problems with your iPhone cellular data connection, try resetting the network settings yourself, it might just work.

It’s Sunday funday again… this time we bring to you a Mac that has a bullet hole right through the screen! How exactly does a Mac get shot?

“Apparently, someone was cleaning his gun, and didn’t realize it was loaded! Whoops”

As quoted from the SmallDog Flickr stream. That’s pretty good aim for an accident, wow, just wow!

[ Image from MacGuys via Flickr ]

The above image was generated with ShapeCollage, which is a great free software program that allows you to create some pretty fancy photo collages, fitting into various shapes (even ones you define yourself) and text barriers. It’s surprisingly quick and very easy to use, basically you just drag and drop images into the application that you want to create your photo collage out of, set the parameters of your collage, and then click ‘create’ to save it at whatever size you want. Does it get much easier to make photo collages?

The ShapeCollage photo collage software is downloadable for free, but your generated collages will have a tiny watermark embedded in the corner (easily removed with Photoshop or cropped out in Preview). ShapeCollage Pro removes the watermarks and is available for $25, it also adds even more options and features if you’re really serious about making photo collages with your digital images. Check this app out, it’s pretty great.

Developer home
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It’s worth mentioning that ShapeCollage is completely cross platform compatible, with Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, and even Java versions available. So if any of your friends are envious of your new cool photo collages that you made, you can share the application with them regardless of what operating system they are using.

If you’ve ever wondered what your Mac Multitouch Trackpad is doing, download this fun little application. It tracks multitouch input and shows you just how sensitive the multitouch surface really is, detecting up to 11 input points, and also knowing the surface area. Not the most useful app in the world it’s certainly a fun way to see what your multitouch is up to and to get a glimpse of the technology behind the scenes of our favorite laptop computing surface. Multitouch trackpad Mac required (works with the Magic Mouse too apparently), and this supposedly works on some 2008 MacBook/Air/Pro models as well but I’m not able to test them specifically.

Lericson Programming: Multitouch on Unibody MacBooks

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You can instantly create a new Stickies note from within Safari by highlighting text, images, or both, and then hitting Command+Shift+Y

I just recently discovered this and use it nonstop now, it’s a great way to gather information, images, links, and whatever else, to keep handy for later.

If you know the file type of a document you are looking for, you can pre-qualify search results by using operators within Spotlight. As you can see in the screenshot, I pre-qualified my search for ‘asia’ with the PDF filetype operator, which led Spotlight to only search PDF documents for the search term. You can even use date sensitive search operators, to search for files created or edited between, before, after, or on specific dates! This makes finding things even faster and more precise, so try them out yourself. Here’s a few example operators to enter before your search query:

Spotlight Search Operators

Note that all of these search operators are used in Spotlight in the following syntax format:
kind:audio Rolling

kind:application

kind:pdf

kind:jpeg

kind:word

kind:folder

kind:image

kind:audio

date:today

date:yesterday

Advanced Spotlight Search Operators

date:>10/1/09 will find any file modified after November 1, 2009, note that the dates you enter must correspond to the short date format you have set in your International preferences

date:<12/31/09 will find any file modified before December 31, 2009

date:1/1/06-12/31/09 will find files modified between the two specified dates. Example syntax is:
date:1/1/06-12/31/09 contract

You can easily open Finder windows containing any search results from the Spotlight menu. After you have entered a search query into Spotlight, highlight the item you want opened in the Finder and hit Command+R to reveal the item within the Finder. Alternatively, instead of just pressing the Enter key to access or open the file you searched for, hold down the Command key while pressing Enter and you will open the parent folder of the file or application.