Want to quickly setup a free proxy server? This article and video from Labnol.org is about as easy as it gets. The walkthrough is geared to Windows users but the technology, software, and setup is practically identical on a Mac, just download the Mac versions of python and Google App Engine SDK rather than Windows versions.

Labnol: Setup a Proxy Server in 5 minutes

While everyone continues to wait for an official Hulu app for the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad/whatever, you can beat them to the punch and get Hulu content on your iPhone now for free, using Snow Leopard!

This is a pretty crafty approach and it requires several things:
* Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard installed
* Latest version of QuickTime Player (with Screen Recording support)
* Hulu Desktop client for Mac (for easy full-screen mode)
* The audio recording utility called SoundFlower (so you can record system audio while a screencast is going on)

In case you hadn’t guessed it yet, after you’ve met the above installation requirements, you basically just set your audio output device to SoundFlower, launch the Hulu app and get your show queued up, then from within QuickTime Player you start a new screen recording and start playing the Hulu show… afterwards simply go through the saved screencast and trim out the desktop stuff you don’t want, and then save the file as iPhone format… crafty huh?

You can see the full walkthrough at SampleTheWeb: How to use Snow Leopard to Record Hulu Content on your iPhone [ screenshot borrowed from SampleTheWeb ]

Here’s how to lock down the Mac OS X Dock, all of these commands need to be issued at the command line via the Terminal, so once you’re there enter the appropriate command:

Lock the Dock to Prevent Changes to Contents

defaults write com.apple.Dock contents-immutable -bool yes

Lock the Dock to Prevent Changes in Size

defaults write com.apple.Dock size-immutable -bool yes

Lock the Dock’s Position on the Screen

defaults write com.apple.Dock position-immutable -bool yes

After executing any or all of these commands, you’ll want to relaunch the Dock by killing it:

killall Dock

The Dock will reload itself and the changes will be in effect. Your Dock is now locked!

Why would you want to lock the Mac OS X Dock? If you’re a Systems Administrator or IT Technician, you can make your life a lot easier by having machines stay consistent. One good way to add to consistency across Mac’s is to lock down the Dock to prevent changes in it’s position, keep the contents in place, and to ensure that the size is the same. Now when you’re trying to remotely describe to someone how to open an application, you can be sure it is located exactly where you left it in the Dock.

Typing the square root symbol in Mac OS X is just a matter of hitting ALT+V

√ – ALT+V

Note that these are Qwerty English specific instructions, other keyboard layouts and languages will likely vary.

Tye Campbell wrote to us with the following question: “Do you guys know how to take apart an iPhone? Specifically the 3G model, I can’t find any way to get to the display and I’d like to do my own screen replacement since mine is cracked but I have another one available to me from a water-damaged iPhone. I’m pretty patient and don’t mind learning, but I don’t even know where to begin, any tips or starting points?”

Good question! I had to take apart an iPhone 3GS recently to replace the back case, I used the guides offered by iFixIt, they are comprehensive and really walk you through accessing various parts of the iPhone including the display. The key is to have the right tools at your disposal before disassembly, otherwise you can end up in a really frustrating situation. Also be sure to track each individual iPhone part and where it comes from inside the device so that when you reassemble it you won’t have any extra pieces laying around! These guides will help you with selecting the right tools and staying organized during the iPhone repair, follow it carefully and you should have no problems. If you’re wondering how to take apart an iPhone, I would go this route:

iFixIt: iPhone 3G Guide

iFixIt: iPhone 3GS Guide

iFixIt: iPhone 1st Gen Guide

There are times where you’ll want to manually set your IP address in Mac OS X, so how do you do it?

* Launch ‘System Preferences’ from the Apple menu (or Spotlight)
* Click on the “Network” icon
* In the lower right, click on the ‘Advanced’ button
* In the pulldown menu next to “Configure IPv4″ select “Manually” (or DHCP with manual address, if that’s what you need)
* Fill in the IP address, subnet mask, and router, as appropriate to the network you are accessing
* Click ‘OK’
* Click ‘Apply’

That’s it! Not too hard right? Computer users can sometimes be funny, my cousin called me frantically asking me how to manually set his IP address, apparently due to the current network conditions at his lab this was a requirement to be able to have internet access. The guy is brilliant, he’s studying for his PhD but he just automatically assumed that setting a manual IP address was complicated, after I walked him through this, he laughed. Don’t be afraid to get your hands a little dirty! Things on a Mac are almost always easier than you think.

You can delete specific pages from a PDF file with the built-in Mac Preview app, just select/highlight the page you want to delete and then hit the delete key. This is really useful for paring down large PDF documents if you only need a few select pages, this is bound to make any student or researchers life easier when emailing or printing documents.

In the above screenshot example, I have deleted multiple unnecessary pages within a research PDF document before I printed it, my school charges for each page so reducing the printed page count is particularly valuable. You’ll notice that the PDF page numbers don’t change though, which is both good in that you can quickly identify which pages are missing, and bad if you are hoping the pages would reorder themselves after others were deleted.

iTunes 9 is great and has a lot of improvements, but changing the background color in Grid view from the nice easy-on-the-eyes dark to the bright retina torching white is not on my happy list. Now they made this different recently but Manish is still am not thrilled. Thankfully French designer Damien Erambert has come up with an easily installable hack to change the grid mode colors in iTunes 9 back to an attractive dark color scheme.

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If you know a phrase that is contained within a document, but can’t remember the document file name, try searching for the phrase that you know appears within the document. Make this phrase search even more precise by putting the phrase itself within quotation marks, for example “all rights reserved” will find all files that contain that exact phrase only.

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.