Oh the rumor that never dies: iPhone is coming to Verizon. This has been speculated for years, but now the partnership of Apple and Verizon seems nearly certain, at least according to a report by Bloomberg. Citing two anonymous sources, Bloomberg claims that iPhone 4 will be available on the Verizon network starting in January of 2011.

If iPhone 4 became available on Verizon, it could produce a significant sales boost for Apple. AppleInsider cites an analyst saying that just having iPhone available on Verizon could sell an additional 12 million iPhones a year, which certainly wouldn’t help the current iPhone 4 availability difficulties, but it would be a very impressive feat considered Apple sold 11 million iPhone’s last year on AT&T alone. Having the iPhone on Verizon would also alleviate some of the network congestion that AT&T is dealing with as a result of the iPhone’s popularity.

I’m going to continue to treat this as a rumor because it’s been talked about so many times in the past, but supposedly this time it’s true… we’ll see come January!

You can easily adjust the search priorities in Spotlight so that Documents or anything else are listed first in the Spotlight search results. Here’s how to do this:

* Launch System Preferences
* Click the Spotlight icon
* You’ll see a list of search categories, you can drag these around at will
* The higher on the list the higher the search priority
* Set your desired search categories and priorities and close System Preferences

If you’re interested, learn how to greatly improve Spotlight searches with search operators, you will be amazed how precise you can get your Spotlight searches to be!

The first iPhone 4 commercial has started to air and it’s all about FaceTime, the new video chat feature of iPhone 4. Here’s what Apple has to say about it on their YouTube page:

People have been dreaming about video calling for decades. iPhone 4 makes it a reality. With the tap of a button, you can wave hello to your kids, share a smile from across the globe, or watch your best friend laugh at your stories — iPhone 4 to iPhone 4 over Wi-Fi. No other phone makes staying in touch this much fun.

This is definitely a great commercial, don’t miss the video!

All the speculation about Hulu coming to the iPad and iPhone on a subscription model is proving true. Hulu announced that a subscription service called Hulu Plus will offer HD content on a variety of devices at a rate of $9.99/month.

Compatible devices for watching Hulu on iPad & iPhone

What you’re probably most interested in is what Hulu for iPad and iPhone will run on specifically, and here’s your answer:

• iPhone 4
• iPhone 3GS running iOS 4
• iPad
• iPod touch 3rd generation running iOS 4

This leaves the original iPhone, iPhone 3G, and any pre-3rd gen iPod touches out of the new Hulu players abilities. If you have other electronics you might not be out of luck though, additional devices that will be able to run Hulu Plus include: internet-enabled Vizio, Samsung, and Sony TV’s, computers, select Blu-ray players, Playstation 3, and Xbox 360.

Hulu Plus for iPad & iPhone preview mode

Currently the Hulu Plus service is in preview mode and only available to use by invitation, but anyone can download the iPhone and iPad apps and get a feel for the service. You can request an invite by going here and entering your email address. Thus far there is no word on how likely it is you’ll actually get an invite code, and whether the preview mode is paid or free.

What about free Hulu on the web?

When I first saw this announcement I couldn’t help but think the days of watching free Hulu via the web are over, especially since Hulu Plus has a Flash client aimed at Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux machines. The big question is whether or not people will pay $9.99 a month for something they can currently watch for free on their computers. We know the demand for Hulu on iPad and iPhone is there, but do people want to shell out additional money to watch TV when they already pay a cable bill?

For those that don’t want to pay, you can always just download the free ABC player and be limited to ABC shows, or try some of the creative workarounds like how to watch Hulu for iPad right now by recording a screencast (this works on the iPhone too).

So that’s it, Hulu is finally announced for iPhone and iPad – you just have to pay for it! Read more at the official home of Hulu Plus.

You can change your web browsers readable text size by hitting the Command key and + key (plus key, next to delete). Changes are immediate. Continuously hitting this key combination will continue to increase the font size and you can take it to ridiculous levels if you want. Reducing the size of the browser font is just as easy, by hitting Command and – (minus key).

I use this all the time when I encounter a website with text that is far too small to be readable by any human without superpower eyesight.

This is a Safari specific tip but the key combinations generally are the same across browsers on the Mac: FireFox, Chrome, Webkit, etc.

Did you know that you can customize the backgrounds of any Finder windows in Mac OS X? In the screenshot above, the Finder windows are set to match the color of the Finder window sidebar. Changing the window background color is a somewhat unknown feature even to frequent Mac users, as reader Karim S reminded us when he wrote in asking: “I was wondering if you have any tips to change the background color of the finder’s windows. I would like to see the white turned into a light grey.” Setting the Finder window background to something is easy once you learn how, and here’s how to do it:

How to customize the Finder window background in Mac OS X

• To customize the background of a Finder window, open any window
• Once inside a Finder window, hit Command+J or navigate from the ‘View’ menu to ‘Show View Options’
• From the View Options, select ‘Color’ or ‘Picture’ under the Background submenu
• Using the color picker, select the color you want to use for window backgrounds. If you are setting a picture, navigate to the picture you want to set as the background
• If you want ALL Finder windows to have this custom background, click on ‘Set as Default’
• Changes take effect immediately, and you’ll see the new color or background picture in all windows
• Close View Options

That’s all there is to it. In Karim’s case he would want to set a grey background and then click on “Set as Default” so that all Finder windows have the same background.

You can easily remove the background customization and reverse whatever changes you made by just opening View Options again and selecting the ‘White’ background, which is the Mac OS default setting.

You know what’s really annoying? When you go to certain websites, copy some text from them, and go to paste elsewhere and it gives you something like this:

Basically, it’s an “iPhone without a screen,” is how Engadget hears it. Oh — and it will cost only $99, supposedly.

Read more: http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/28/new-apple-tv/#ixzz0pH6qJPa4

You wanted to just paste the top single sentence, but some company thought it would be a brilliant idea to include some link spam into your clipboard buffer as well. The company responsible for this is called Tynt (affectionately called Taint around the web), and they are generating a lot of bad press for themselves with this annoying ‘technology’ if you could even call it that.

Stopping the copy/paste link spam

There’s a few ways to stop the Tynt garbage from appearing in your copy and pasted web text, the first involves editing your /etc/hosts file. You may recall that you can edit your /etc/hosts file to block access to websites on your Mac, well that is exactly what we’re going to do, block Tynt’s Javascript from working.

• Using your favorite text editor, edit /etc/hosts (you will need admin privileges)
• Add a new line to the file and type this exactly:

127.0.0.1 tcr.tynt.com

• Save /etc/hosts

For changes to take effect, you need to flush your Mac DNS, so launch the Terminal and type the following:
dscacheutil -flushcache
Done, now your web browsing experience should be significantly improved as you don’t have to deal with the Tynt garbage filling up your clipboard anytime you copy and paste text from websites that use it. I came across this method on DaringFireball, who has an excellent summary of Tynt and its general annoying and hostile nature.

Block Tynt copy/paste spam with browser extensions

If mucking around in system files is not your thing, you can also block Tynt clipboard spam by installing extensions into your web browser of choice:

• Safari 5 Extension – TyntBlocker (installs automatically) – Developer home
• Chrome Extension – Tynt blocker for Chrome

If you install one of these browser extensions, you won’t need to use the above method of editing your hosts file. Oh and yes, these techniques work on either a Mac or a PC (Windows or Linux for that matter).

Copy/paste spam problem solved!

DeskLickr is a fun little app that sits in your menubar and pulls images from Flickr to set them as your desktop picture. Basically you just specify how often you want your wallpaper changed, and a couple search tags, and DeskLickr does it’s job quietly in the background. This is great for anyone who gets tired of having the same background picture constantly.

Beware that certain search tags on Flickr might bring you unanticipated results: in testing the app I selected ‘beach’ as one of my keywords and I was given a high resolution picture of a grandpa in a speedo!

Developer home
Download now

[ via SweetMacTips ]

I’m not sure what the Mac driving the monitors is but this is a pretty nice looking setup with dual screens. I particularly like the raised shelf where you can scoot the keyboard and mouse under to immediately clear off desk space.

[ via Flickr ]

If you want to disable the internal microphone on your Mac, you can through two methods, reducing the input volume or selecting a different and nonexistent audio input:

Disable the internal microphone by reducing the input volume to 0
* Launch System Preferences
* Click on “Sound”
* Click on the “Input” tab
* Drag the “Input volume” slider all the way to the left, as seen in the above screenshot
* Close System Preferences

This works just by reducing the audio input to zero, effectively making the internal microphone unable to capture any sound. If you want to basically disable the internal microphone’s ability to hear audio, use the below method instead.

Disable the internal microphone by selecting a different audio input
* Launch the System Preferences
* Click on “Sound”
* Click on the “Input” tab
* Select “Line-in”
* Close System Preferences

This works by changing the audio input to the line-in, also known as the audio input port on your Mac. As long as you don’t actually have any audio input device connected, such as an external microphone or some other line-in device, this method is very effective.