Do you want to keep yourself or your employees from wasting time on certain websites? Maybe you don’t want your child to see some of the virtual trashbins of the internet? By editing the /etc/hosts systems file, you can block any website, and here’s how to do it.

Easily block websites from being accessed in Safari, Firefox, or the Chrome browser

* Launch the Terminal and type the following command, you will need to enter a root password:
sudo pico /etc/hosts
* Using your arrow keys navigate down and create a new line in the file
* You can block any website by following the format of:
127.0.0.1 facebook.com
127.0.0.1 myspace.com
127.0.0.1 twitter.com
* Exit and save /etc/hosts by hitting Control+O and then the Return key

Next you will need to flush your DNS cache for the changes to take effect, this is done through the Terminal as well with the following command in 10.6:

sudo dscacheutil -flushcache

Unblocking the sites is simply a matter of removing them from the /etc/hosts file and flushing your DNS cache again. This whole thing works by pointing the domains you want blocked to your machines localhost (127.0.0.1). If you wanted to be tricky you could point the blocked domain to a different IP address entirely, like 74.125.19.103 (Google.com in English). For this purpose, you can get any websites IP address by typing nslookup domain.com into the Terminal.

If you want a network wide solution to blocking websites or any other network services, you’d need to modify your routers settings.

Note: This tip was covered a few years back with instructions to block websites on a Mac. I’ve gotten enough messages about the topic that I felt it was worth repeating, even though the methodology is the same.

James sent us in this picture of the Logitech Alto Express Notebook Stand being used as a “perfect stand for the iPad” that apparently makes “typing 100x faster and easier.” Not bad considering it’s $10-$25 either.

So you need to run Internet Explorer on your Mac and you don’t want to bother with a full Windows install in something like Parallels. What are you left with?

Update: You can download Internet Explorer and Windows virtual machines for free that run within Mac OS X. That method works for IE7, IE 8, and IE9, although they run within a VM rather than as an app like the below method.

Try WineBottler, it runs off of Wine and ‘bottles’ various Windows apps into launchable .app files that sit in your Applications folder like any other Mac app. There’s several packages included in WineBottler but the ones you are interested in using are Internet Explorer.

Download Internet Explorer for Mac

Downloading Internet Explorer for Mac directly can be done with IE5, but as we mention below Microsoft stopped supporting it officially after this version. Later versions of Internet Explorer can be downloaded and run through the WineBottler app within Mac OS X, the instructions below will walk you through this process with versions 6, 7, and 8.

Here’s how to get Internet Explorer running on your Mac using WineBottler:
Read more »

You can quickly post a tweet from the command line using the curl command, all you’ll need is your Twitter username and password.

Launch the Terminal and type the following all on one line, replacing username and password with your own:

curl -u username:password -d status="your status message here" http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml

I came across this via MurphyMac who used the command to schedule Twitter updates while sleeping (seriously), using the curl command in conjunction with the sleep command. I’m not sure how practical tweeting while sleeping is, but the ability to post a quick update from the command line is pretty handy.

If you’re so inclined, you can use the above command and make a quick bash script so that you can easily tweet from the command line without typing the full string. Just place the following in a text file and name it something like tweet.sh:
#!/bin/bash
curl -u username:password -d status="$1" http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml
Be sure to specify your username and password. Then be sure to make the file executable:
chmod u+x tweet.sh
Now you’ll just need to type ./tweet.sh "I love OS X Daily" to tweet your message to the world. Thanks to Greg Mason for correcting the permissions error!

Ian Winter took the above bash script a bit further and added the ability to prevent you from posting no tweet, and a warning if a tweet is over the 140 character limit. Here is his script:
#!/bin/bash
TWEET=$1
TWEETLEN=${#TWEET}
if [ $TWEETLEN -eq 0 ] || [ $TWEETLEN -gt 140 ]; then
if [ $TWEETLEN -gt 140 ]; then
let EXTRA=$TWEETLEN-140
echo "Usage: tweet \"message\" (140 chars or less, you're $EXTRA over)"
else
echo "Usage: tweet \"message\" (140 chars or less)"
fi
exit 1
else
curl -u username:password -d status="$1" http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml
fi
exit 0
Like before, edit your username and password, and save the file as tweet and be sure to make it executable chmod 755 tweet

Booting into safe mode in Mac OS X is just a matter of holding down the shift key during system start, it’s helpful for troubleshooting a problematic Mac and does a number of things:

* Disables all startup & login items
* Loads only essential kernel extensions
* Disables all third party fonts
* Deletes font caches
* Forces a directory check (like Disk Repair)
* Removes a dynamic loader cache which can cause problems after a System Update
* Disables Quartz Extreme accelerated graphics

Basically if a Mac functions fine in Safe Mode but things are going wrong during a normal boot, something is obviously going wrong in the startup process, and safe mode helps you to narrow down the cause. It’s not something I’ve had to use often, but there’s been at least two occasions where machines were hanging upon loading the Finder and a funky 3rd party login item was to blame. If you ever get a blank blue screen after System Update, booting into Safe Mode will often resolve this by deleting the caches.

You can read more about Mac OS X’s Safe Boot Mode at Apple’s Knowledge Base

If you are trying to view invisible files through the Mac FTP client Transmit, stop looking around in the Preferences and View Options because it won’t be there. Instead, pull down the ‘View’ menu and scroll down to ‘Show Invisible Files’ to enable this functionality.

I love Transmit, it is by far my favorite FTP client for Mac OS X and I’ve used it on a near daily basis for years. This is one thing that’s always bothered me about Transmit though, the ability to view invisible files isn’t part of the File Preferences as you’d expect, instead it’s stuffed somewhat awkwardly in the View menu. This makes sense on a per-view perspective, but I want to always be able to see invisible files which makes it more of a preference in my mind.

Apparently I’m not the only one with this frustration, a friend of mine sent me a really peeved instant message cursing Transmit saying it was crippled and he couldn’t even see the .htaccess files on his webserver, and then he felt stupid after I told him it was just under the “View” menu. And yes, that instant message is the reason for this post, he’s a smart guy and couldn’t find it, surely other people have this problem.

Unfortunately I missed the Transmit official beta signup, otherwise I would attempt to make this a feature request.

I’ve long been looking for a good MySQL manager for Mac OS X since I’m not a big fan of phpMyAdmin and the other tools out there. I came across SequelPro recently and I think it might fit the bill. With it’s beautiful interface, you can easily connect to local or remote MySQL servers, easily run queries in it’s awesome query editor that’s complete with auto-completion, and everything else you’d expect. Development is ongoing so this already great app is only going to get better.

The best part? It’s totally free and open source. SequelPro may just be the best MySQL database manager for Mac OS X, if there is a better solution I haven’t found it yet!

Developer home
Download SequalPro now

This chart displays the GeekBench scores of the new 2010 MacBook Pro models versus each other and the older 2009 models they replaced.

As you can see from the scores, the MacBook Pro Core i5 and i7 models really blow away their predecessors, while the MacBook Pro 13″ model with it’s Core 2 Duo processor gets a smaller bump in the benchmarks. This is in line with earlier MacBook Pro benchmarks showing the 50% performance gain when moving from the Core 2 Duo chips to the Core i7. The above chart was put together by PrimateLabs, who notes the following (emphasis mine):

It’s no surprise the new laptops are faster. It’s interesting to note, though, that the slowest Core i5 is faster than the fastest Core 2 Duo processor despite running at a much lower frequency (2.40GHz vs 3.06GHz). This is a result of the architecture improvements in the i5 and the i7. For example, Turbo Boost and Hyper-Threading provide a nice boost to processor scores; single-threaded workloads benefit from higher processor frequencies while multi-threaded workloads benefit from extra hardware threads. Memory scores (especially Stream scores which measure raw memory bandwidth) are higher due to the integrated memory controller on the i5 and i7.

PrimateLabs goes on to recommend the base MacBook Pro 15″ Core i5 and maxed out RAM, which isn’t surprising considering the huge performance gain of the Core i5 processor, and more RAM is always good with Mac OS X. I would generally agree, and add that the optional high resolution screen of the MacBook Pro 15″ is a really compelling upgrade.

So you want an iPad, but you don’t want to pay pay for one, and you already have an iPhone? No problem, with this amazing iPhone to iPad upgrade kit, you just strap a giant magnifying glass to your face with a comfy rubber band, and that iPhone is transformed! So. Stupid.

Thank you Jeff for sending in the hilarious picture!

If you happen across an image on the web and you are using the Safari browser, you can just right-click on that picture to “Use as Desktop Picture” – this is the easiest for pictures on the web.

Otherwise you can use images that are stored on your Mac desktop or within the Finder:

The easiest way to change your Mac’s desktop background picture

* Right-click on the image you want to use as the Mac’s background picture
* Scroll down to the bottom of the contextual menu to ‘Set Desktop Picture’
* Done!

You can also use the System Preferences to change the Mac background:

* Go to the Apple menu and select ‘System Preferences’
* Click on the “Desktop & Screen Saver” icon
* Click the “Desktop” tab
* You can now drag & drop a picture into the little preview window and it will set automatically to that image