Earlier today Microsoft released the second beta of their Remote Desktop Connection application. This new version introduces an updated user interface (not sure if its worse or better), Universal binary support, Vista support, dynamic window resizing and quite a bit more. It is good to see Microsoft update this utility as it is a crucial … Read More

Adding a user is something easily accomplished using the built in GUI tools that ship with OS X, however any power user can appreciate the possible efficiency gained from using the command line. So in the spirit of efficiency here are the steps necessary to add a user to your Mac OS X system all … Read More

Recently while using the OS X Terminal I noticed that the “Page Up” and “Page Down” keys do not send an actual page up sequence to an active Terminal session. This was discovered with the irssi app, but it actually pertains to the Terminal in general. Instead, it seems that the default behavior is to … Read More

Gmail Notifier is a great little utility that lets you know when you have mail in your Gmail inbox. What I have always disliked about it though is the apparent lack of the ability to use the secure https protocol. If you’re on public networks, this can be a particularly valid concern for privacy and … Read More

If you’re anything like me, you’ve accidentally hit command-Q while in Safari on the Mac and lost tons of important tabs. Unfortunately there’s no warning so if you make such a mistake, that’s that. Well, not quite anymore, thanks to TabStop. TabStop is a handy utility that causes Safari to warn you before closing a … Read More

The durable and powerful ZFS file system is said to be the official file system of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, this according to a report on MacNN. Citing the CEO of Sun Microsystems as the source of the information, Apple will reportedly announce the change this next week at the Worldwide Developer Conference. From … Read More

Here’s a great Firefox tip that I think you’ll appreciate as much as I do, which allows for a spell checking function in web based input forms. To accomplish this, you’ll start by editing an entry within the about:config configuration menu of Firefox, where you can enable spell checking in text input fields. For example, … Read More

Mac browser usage goes something like this: #1) Safari #2) Firefox and #3) Camino, after that not much is really relevant. While Camino is not as widely used as Safari and Firefox, it’s still a good browser, and some Mac users swear buy it claiming it is better than both it’s better known brothers. If … Read More

Want to see available disk space of drives and volumes on the desktop of Mac OS X? Perhaps you’d like to see information about files and folders that are on the Mac desktop as well, including dimensions of images, and data about file counts contained within folders. You can reveal this information easily with a … Read More

TubeTV is a great little app that allows you to easily convert web videos to either iPod or Apple TV compatible formats. All you do is direct an URL to the app and it’ll download in either iPod or AppleTV compatible formats. TubeTV requires the Perian QuickTime plugin, but don’t worry it’ll tell you if … Read More

We love tips that make your computing life easier, and this command line tip from Cedrik Morgan falls into that category, making a lengthy ssh command quite a bit shorter by creation of an alias. Here’s what Cedrik writes in:

Ever closed a browser tab in Firefox and wished you hadn’t done so? A simple keystroke can retrieve that closed browser tab! I can’t count the number of times I have been closing windows or tabs and have accidentally a tab that I wanted kept open. In the past, it has been annoying at best … Read More

It is not unusual for companies and schools to block certain ports to prevent people from using things like P2P networks and AIM. But the AIM chat protocol is quite popular, so if you want to use it and you find it to be blocked on a network, you can probably get around it by … Read More

This looks to be a week of SSH tips, beyond secure WebMail access with SSH tunnels, MacApper.com has a nice post about using secure tunnels to surf the web and talk on instant messengers. Why is any of this SSH stuff useful or important you may ask? In short, SSH provides a very secure protocol … Read More

MacPorts, formerly DarwinPorts, is a free open source app that allows Mac users to easily install command line software and x11 software in Mac OS X by using the ‘ports’ command line tool for package management. MacPorts is probably best for more advanced Mac users who have some experience with the command line, because MacPorts … Read More

Since Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard has been delayed until October, Apple is rumored to be working on an update to Mac OS X 10.4. The update will supposedly be released under the version number 10.4.10, a somewhat unusual number for Apple, who typically release a significant update like 10.5 after a .9 update. The … Read More

Here’s a simple Dock hack that is really useful for those of us who have many applications open at once. When activated, icons of applications that are hidden (either by right clicking the icon in the Dock, or by option-clicking away from the application) will appear transparent within the Dock like the screenshot shows with … Read More

Virtual memory serves a crucial task in modern operating systems, essentially how it works is that when you run out of real memory (RAM), the slower hard disk will take over as a temporary memory source. The downside is that the hard disk is slower, so running things in virtual memory is not ideal, one … Read More