I just found out about Skim and I find it to be wildly useful for personal use, but I can imagine this could be a huge productivity booster for anyone in academia in particular. In short, Skim views any PDF files quickly as expected, but more importantly it allows you to take notes and annotate … Read More

Creating your own cheap Mac Hackintosh out of a PC Netbook is pretty popular right now, so I compiled a list of various how-to guides mostly for myself but figured I would share it with our readers as well. The guides rank from reasonably easy (Dell Mini 9) to an arduous hack, and it’s technically … Read More

Have you ever wanted to have your Mac require a password on waking from system sleep, but not ask for a password when the screensaver is on or the screen was locked? Well, me neither, but someone out there might and it’s kind of a nifty customization tip that has some valid uses in some … Read More

I really enjoy videochatting with friends and family using iChat, so I was pretty frustrated when seemingly out of nowhere iChat video started freezing completely after a video chat session was initiated. I searched around a bit and noticed other people having the same problem and symptoms – iChat video freezes but iChat audio still … Read More

Mac users are largely immune to the world of virus and trojans, but it’s not uncommon for you to be a Mac user in a LAN sea of Windows PC’s. The Conficker Virus is Windows only but it’s garnering a lot of attention, so if you’re on a Windows LAN at home, work, or school, … Read More

It’s very easy to mirror an entire web site on your local machine thanks to the terminal command wget, this tutorial will show you how to do it via the command line. wget is available for Mac OS X, Linux, Unix, and many other popular operating system platforms, thus this is universally applicable assuming you … Read More

Need to show hidden files on a Mac? This is pretty common if you find yourself needing to access hidden files on your Mac, like an .htaccess file you downloaded, a .bash_profile, a .svn directory, – literally anything preceded with a ‘.’ indicating it is invisible by default – you can run the below command … Read More

If you are anything like me, you may struggle to keep up with a years worth of Hollywood releases. One easy way to sort through the noise is to focus on what the awards and festivals determine are worthwhile investments for your time, and you can further narrow the movies down by looking at the … Read More

MAMP: It stands for Mac Apache MySql PHP, and it’s a fantastic setup for Mac based web developers. Basically, think LAMP but for Mac OS X users, and in a pre-packaged, simple to use environment, which also indludes PHPMyAdmin, perl, python, and SQL Lite.

A quick way to lock your Mac desktop is to hit Shift-Command-Option-Q to do a fast user log out. This logs the current user out of Mac OS X, which is one way to initiate a login screen when the Mac needs to be used again. Another method is brought to us by inaminit who … Read More

Have you ever wanted to listen to Pandora from a Mac, but without opening a web browser like Safari? Some of us just use Pandora on our iPhone or iPad as we work on a Mac, but what if you could stay on the computer entirely? While there is always Pandora.com and there are a … Read More

Update: Different wallpapers for different spaces is now a feature of Mac OS X Lion, here’s how to use it. Spaces. Personally, it is my favorite addition to Apple’s Leopard operating system. I have become very accustomed to working with Spaces and have long desired the ability to set a different background for each virtual … Read More

I have been a long time user of Skype and recently some of the features unique to the beta have caught my attention. In particular, I am enjoying the new screen sharing functionality. Frequently, I work remotely and find screen sharing crucial to collaboration. If you haven’t already, I encourage you to cruise over to … Read More

Wallsaver is a freeware utility that allows you to easily take a screensaver and make it your desktop background, creating a nifty interactive effect that’s pleasant to look at. Aimed at older versions of OS X however, it’s not going to be for anyone, and furthermore, the Wallsaver app is basically a front-end to the … Read More

Recently I connected my Mac to my linux based NFS server at home. I use NFS to access files from two other Linux boxes and on each server my UID (unique id) is set to 1000. In order for me to easily have full access to my NFS shares from OS X I changed my … Read More

These days there are no shortage of ways to backup your Macintosh. Probably the most popular method available to an end-user is Apple’s Time Machine which is handled automatically after a simple setup through the GUI, or can be triggered to start at any time. Personally, I was very impressed with the ease of use … Read More

Is Windows 7 really the Mac OS X slaying OS that so many claim it to be? Is it the greatest thing since sliced bread? There is all sorts of hooplah in the tech world about Microsofts Windows 7 beta, so why not see what the fuss is all about using your Mac? Rather than … Read More

Photo Booth is a really fun app that comes with all macs that have a built in iSight / FaceTime front facing camera. Here are a couple tips that make using Photo Booth on your mac even more enjoyable; the ability to disable the ‘white screen’ flash and the ability to disable the 3 second … Read More